As an industry we’ve long discussed the exciting promise of combining data, with adtech and creative possibilities, to enhance the experience of digital advertising. Although frequently discussed, dynamic creative optimisation (DCO) is yet to fulfil the promise of large-scale, relevant digital communications, meanwhile technology has progressed to differentiate between ‘personalisation’ and ‘dynamic optimisation’ – enabling more sophisticated possibilities for marketers today. 

With 2019 in full swing, there are three core reasons ushering this year to be the year that we see personalisation technologies rapidly integrated into digital communications and video content.

Technological innovation 

Traditionally, dynamic creative optimisation has been used to describe the process of creating and testing multiple versions of ads for performance based campaigns. Using techniques such as multivariate testing, DCO campaigns aim to establish which combinations of assets perform the best, and optimise the creative towards those results. 

DCO has its shortfalls, requiring a significant amount of data to learn and optimise; often demanding a lengthy and costly set-up, considerable skill and experience to optimise effectively.

Over the last two years, new technologies and processes have come to market that fundamentally change the way that brand and agencies plan, create and run high-impact automated campaigns. Today’s leading personalisation technologies are highly sophisticated machines; referencing multiple sets of data to identify individual consumer preferences and profiles to serve the optimum combination of creative content to each consumer in real-time.This new approach to digital advertising and personalisation goes a lot further than improving performance, it has opened new opportunities to run highly personalised campaigns across all channels – even digital broadcast TV. 

Obstacles removed, results multiplied

By using personalisation, advertisers can dynamically create an unlimited number of ad permutations in real-time, all served through a single ad tag. This not only simplifies ad production and trafficking to save time and money for brands of all sizes, but enables creative teams and media buyers to focus on their specialist areas for maximum effectiveness. Cablato research shows that personalised advertising created and executed in this way sees, on average, between 2.5x – 4x uplift in consumer engagement compared to version-based advertising. 

DCO has traditionally relied on a ‘learning period’ before the most effective combinations are delivered to a target audience. This has been a media wastage that Cablato, as a programmatic ad serving company, have been able to remove by combining data with intelligent decisioning and machine learning. This is enhanced when applied within sophisticated media-buying platforms such as Avocet, the DSP that targets and reports on view-duration, i.e. the time that a brand is in-view of the consumer. By utilising personalisation and innovative technologies, brands are able to deliver the optimum creative experience to their target audience from the first impression.

Video personalisation is here

Now that there’s no need for creative versioning, video personalisation technology is available to serve the most appropriate content and messaging through a single VAST tag, which removes brand dependence on ad serving technology. This approach also reduces campaign line items and uses the likes of 1st and 3rd party data, longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates, and weather to optimise the creative and enable effective messaging possibilities.

With personalisation being a key strategy for many businesses in 2019, we at Cablato have seen a big demand from brands to be able to effectively create, manage and serve video content. Until now, being able to dynamically create and serve video advertising at scale and across all devices had been a challenge, both technically and operationally. With advanced technology now available to automate dynamic video advertising, there is a huge opportunity for advertisers to engage and build relationships with consumers that just weren’t possible in the past.

Seizing the opportunity

The evolution of personalised digital messaging is exciting for all digital channels and presents a new opportunity for over the top advertising in 2019, especially as Ofcom reported that streaming services collectively overtook premium linear TV for the first time in July of this year. Whilst connected TV will be the next area to welcome technological innovation for improved consumer experiences, display and social channels can embrace the advances in personalisation immediately, with advertisers seeing increases up to 4x in both engagement and tracked sales from personalised campaigns already. As personalisation continues to advance, adoption by marketers next year will push brands into a new era of digital communications – ultimately helping to build stronger consumer relationships across digital touchpoints.