Consumer Journey
Data through the consumer journey: Data is available all the way through the consumer’s journey — as they move from awareness to purchase.
Relevant creatives can be targeted based on the stage of the journey — from engaging with new prospects, positioning a brand during consideration, to driving purchase and repeat purchase.
Data includes search intent, in-market segments, actions taken on a customer’s website, ad or site engagement, purchases, and more. Data-driven creative can use data signals to dynamically target creatives and deliver a personalized and relevant experience. Data signals include who they are, where they are, and what they want. One of the advantages of using Display & Video 360 for data-driven creatives is that the creative and media teams can collaborate in one platform.
Which type of ad format matches the look and feel of a publisher’s site/app? Native ads
How does data-driven creative benefit advertisers? Data signals can be used to dynamically target the relevance of creative and deliver a personalized experience. Which platform enables creative and media teams to collaborate when building data-driven creatives? Display & Video 360.
Gather insights from all available data sources
Data comes from many cross-functional teams, including marketing, product, data analysts, agency partners, reporting, attribution tools (Display & Video 360), and analytics tools (Analytics 360).
- Collect and segment your audiences. Gather insights from the right channels to build a segmentation strategy.
- Identify the moments that matter. Choose when you want to engage your customers and prospects.
- Think about the signals that your customers give off in these moments.
Collaborate on the digital brief
Bring all of the stakeholders together to collaborate on the digital brief.
In the brief, you should:
- Establish insights from the data collected in Step 1, and decide which ones you want to use in your campaign.
- Align your data signals with your business goals.
- Establish your campaign KPIs and how they’ll be measured.
- Develop a timeline.
Design the format for the Ad Canvas
Use one of Display & Video 360’s pre-built data-driven formats (blank slate, cue cards, or panorama), or use Google Web Designer to build a custom format.
You can also use blank slate, cue cards, or panorama components in Google Web Designer and further customize them there.
When choosing or designing your format, it’s important to decide which elements of the creative will change based on data signals. This will allow your creative team to create those assets in parallel with the media team, so all your creative content will be ready to use in the Ad Canvas.Close
Build your variants with dynamic rules
While the creative team is building creative variants in the Ad Canvas, the media or production team should be defining customer segments in the dynamic rules section. This step is one of the most collaborative parts of the data-driven process.
After the data-driven creative has been previewed and finalized, select Publish so your team can add it to a line item.
Launch the campaign
Data-driven creative allows you to traffic a single, data-driven creative instead of a unique creative for each creative message.
Assign your data-driven creatives to line items for trafficking. If you can, hold a soft launch to ensure that:
- Everything is in place
- Your media targeting works with your dynamic rules (check out these best practices)
- You’re collecting the right reporting metrics
When you’re ready, ramp up and launch your campaign!Close
A fluid creative process
There are three key mind shifts that can help brands collaborate and execute campaigns with a creative-first approach:Select each panel to learn more.
The Creative module in Display & Video 360 enables you to build multiple creative variants in Ad Canvas so you can show different creatives to different customer segments.
Key takeaways
- Creative, production, and media teams should share ideas and parallelize workflows.
- Display & Video 360 makes it easier for teams to collaborate by allowing them to create, manage, and make changes to the creative on the Ad Canvas.
- Data-driven creative allows media teams to traffic a single data-driven creative instead of unique creatives for each message.
Ad Canvas provides a visual and data-driven workflow for dynamic ad creation in Display & Video 360. Creative and media teams can collaborate to build sophisticated data-driven creatives that personalize the look and feel of an ad based on specific creative and content strategies.
Which of the following platforms would you use to build a custom format for data-driven creative? Google Web Designer
In order to design a data-driven creative, you need to: Decide which elements of the creative will change based on data signals.
It’s the blueprint that tells us the best creatives for driving our advertiser’s campaign goals—and it’s very much a team effort
Campaign objectives:
- Brand awareness
- New site visitors
- Live event sign-ups
- Online sales
- Etc.
Campaign plan:
- When to run
- Where to run
- Budget for each flight
The media agency works with the advertiser to set where and when the ads need to run, and with what budget.
Audience insights:
- Demographics for raising brand awareness
- Categories and affinity groups for influencing consideration
- First-party audience data for driving actions
Key team members pool their resources to specify just who they need to reach based on the data their analytics team has provided.
The brand specialist looks at what past campaign data tells us. The media specialist looks at what the advertiser’s first-person data tells us. The programmatic specialist looks at what Google Marketing Platform’s own demographic data and third-party data tell us. The creative specialist attends because this discussion is a great primer on how to build the actual creatives.
Creative requirements:
- Correct brand look and feel (color, font, logo)
- Best ad formats for objectives
- Best ad messaging for objectives
The brand specialist and creative specialist work with the advertiser.
The brand specialist defines the correct creative look and feel to match advertiser brand. The creative specialist explains the hot formats and messaging and the exchanges that take them. They also define the metrics to install in creatives for measurement.
Dynamic strategy:
- Creatives to be built (including size, responsiveness)
- Inventory outlets for each ad iteration
- Technical considerations, concerns
- Authoring tool
The specialists at this stage are responsible for ensuring the message is crafted for the right audiences and in the best formats for delivering it.
The brand specialist ensures each targeted message lines up with the campaign goal. They also identify each audience (when and where) and the message for them. The media specialist specifies which media from across the available inventory to run on to reach each target audience. The creative specialist designs each creative iteration for each targeted message according to their dynamic data signal. The production specialist determines the needed creative formats (i.e., dynamic) and calls out technical or creative concerns. They also advise on the most realistic timeline for creative development.
Implementation and optimization:
- Execution plan
- Later optimization plan
The brief should be detailed enough for an implementation specialist to sign into their Studio account and begin building ads and campaigns.For example, this means the brief should state the budget assigned to each campaign’s marketing objective. The document should be clear about which creative message aligns with each campaign strategy.The media specialist provides campaign performance data (from the analytics team) and identifies necessary changes. They also fine-tune the campaign’s bids, budgeting, and targeting to accomplish the team’s goals and objectives.The brand specialist reviews performance to ensure everything works as planned (or better than planned), and approves any necessary changes. The creative specialist reviews performance data and provides insights and feedback for quick creative optimizations. The production specialist reviews performance data and provides insights and feedback for quick optimizations. They also update the team on recommended changes to the feed or dynamic profile.
The Advertiser determines the advertiser’s budget, goals, campaign start and end dates, and our general expectations.
The brand specialist helps build the brand strategy through audience insights, and determine which audiences to target, key messaging, and style guides for the creatives.
The media specialist works with the advertiser and suggest where to target their ads in order to reach their key audience. I also may suggest how to allocate the budget across different strategies.
The Creative specialist pitches and prepare the most relevant ad formats and brand messaging. I also design each dynamic creative iteration for its targeted audience, a general default creative, and a backup image.
The production specialist helps build the creative, and am pretty good at coding in HTML5. I also make sure we meet deadlines, and advise on technical requirements for the creative.
The digital brief is a blueprint for what to build, and how to build it, to best drive an advertiser’s campaign goals.
Your creative specialist needs to use an HTML5 authoring tool to produce ads for Studio, but doesn’t know which one to use. What do you tell him/her are the benefits of Google Web Designer over other options?
It includes an HTML5 Enabler when publishing, There’s no charge to download and use, It can publish directly to Studio.
Now that you’ve seen the process of adding dynamic customizations to creative, let’s see how you’ll apply the knowledge to your own projects.
You just brought on a new client who wants you to help deliver different messages to customers based on where they live. What strategy can you use when you develop your dynamic creative? Audience targeting
Now that you’ve learned more about how you can influence customers using Campaign Manager IDs and data pass, let’s see if you are ready to use it in your own campaign.
You’re working with an agency that’s about to kick off a campaign to promote their new line of health foods. They really want to get their message out to moms. How can you use Campaign Manager and Display & Video 360 to make that happen?
By using dynamic targeting keys to have a customized ad appear on parent websites. By purchasing third-party data to target moms. By using first-party data to customize your message to moms who have visited your site.
Now that you’ve seen how Eduardo and Heather created a dynamic ad that drives user action, let’s see what you remember.
Your client wants to remarket a specific product to users who researched the product page on the client’s website. What kind of ID is required?
Now that you’ve seen how Devi and Heather perform QA on a creative in Studio, let’s see what you remember.
When a creative is ready to QA in Studio, what status is it in?
Now that you’ve seen how Arnold reported on dynamic creatives in Report Builder, let’s see what you remember.
Your campaign has two ads: one is a standard creative, the other is a dynamic creative with two different versions that serve different images based on geographic targeting. In the past week, the standard creative has 500 impressions. The two versions of the dynamic creative have 450 and 100 dynamic impressions, respectively. They dynamic ad.