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How the highly personalised 'dynamic creatives' are helping brands target customers with relevant ads
An example of a dynamic creativePixabay
Dynamic creatives are customised ads that optimise ROI automatically by providing relevant content for consumers. We sp...
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How the highly personalised 'dynamic creatives' are helping brands target customers with relevant ads

Dynamic creatives are customised ads that optimise ROI automatically by providing relevant content for consumers. We sp...
  • Dynamic creatives are customised ads that optimise ROI automatically by providing relevant content for consumers.
  • These use dynamically assembled elements such as time, relevance, pace, context and call to action to serve up a customised ad based on consumer attributes.
  • We spoke to a few marketers and agency heads to find out how they are uniquely developed for each customer, the reason behind its rising demand, and scope for its growth ahead.
Ever browsed online, abandoned the product in your shopping cart and saw an advertisement tracking you everywhere on your social media accounts? Or have you wondered why you're seeing products related to or similar as the one you were looking for, following you everywhere? These advertisements that are tailored in real-time to connect differently with each individual are called Dynamic Creatives.

Srikanth Bureddy, Co-founder and Director, Valueleaf, defines it as a creative that connects differently to each individual. "It is a profile-based approach i.e., every individual sees something that is of interest to him/her," he explains.

Brands are now making these dynamic creatives based not just on browsing habits but on weather, demographic data, location, device, webpage context, and user interest. And it is not just e-commerce. Auto-mobile, FMCG, Health Insurance and many more brands from different categories are opting for this new way of advertising.

Sharing the modus operandi behind dynamic creatives, Vishal Rupani, Co-founder and CEO, says, “Typically, to create a dynamic ad, an advertiser designs a template with placeholders. The elements (such as images and text) inside the placeholder, change, depending on the context and the person to whom the ad is being served. A simple example of a dynamic creative is a banner where you can see the cricket score updating in real time during a live game. Here, the template is fixed but the text (score) keeps updating to show the latest information.”

Agencies usually keep a set of assets pre-approved. They are plugged in the template basis a targeting algorithm and the creative is then built through an automated process.

Prashant Verma, VP - Marketing, Grofers, shares an example of how it works with different customers. He says, “With a dynamic creative, you can show an ad with a discount coupon to a price sensitive consumer or with product review to a consumer with low brand awareness. Similarly, if you have a consumer who has a knack for consuming diet food, you can show her sequenced creatives on products such as muesli, cornflakes, chia seeds or protein supplement for a tailored experience.”

Common Uses of Dynamic Creatives
Dynamic creative, that initially started with product retargeting, has now evolved with time. Brands also use it to recommend related products to the originally browsed one ─ upselling other products users may be interested in ─ customised to where they are in the purchase cycle.

“Several brands use dynamic creatives for sequential storytelling. Targeted to a specific audience, these ads have a structured narrative, and are displayed in a determined order and a defined frequency. It relies on users consciously interacting with the brand, which is then tracked and used by brands to optimise and personalise campaigns further,” shares Rupani.

When the Vivo V7 phone launched, mCanvas created a mobile-led dynamic creative campaign to promote it. The creative was targeted to phones with specifications that were lower than Vivo V7. The content of the creative was generated in real time such that it showed the targeted phone’s specifications and then asked users to learn about Vivo V7.
How the highly personalised 'dynamic creatives' are helping brands target customers with relevant ads
Telling us what worked for the brand, Rupani said, “Given the high level of personalization and relevance, users engaged better with the creative and spent significantly higher amount of time interacting with the brand narrative.

“Similar to Vivo, we recently created a dynamic creative campaign for Aditya Birla Health Insurance, which specifically targeted Delhi users. To create awareness about the effects of smog on health, the ad used real-time weather data to showcase the then current AQI of Delhi,” adds Rupani.

How the highly personalised 'dynamic creatives' are helping brands target customers with relevant ads

Reason behind the rising demand


What attracts brands the most about these creatives is that they can optimize ROI automatically. All they have to do is provide relevant content for each consumer by observing their behaviour.

Puneet Gulati, Head - Digital Marketing and Media, GSK Consumer Healthcare India, says dynamic creatives help brands improve media KPIs.

He adds, “In the ever increasing need to personalise and sharply target, brands are able to leverage dynamic creatives to create customized messaging for the different set of audience that the brand understands. In doing so, brands stand to increase the chances of higher engagement with the creative, thereby leading to better conversions across the funnel.”

But it is not all cake walk

Customising different types of creatives, catering to different needs, within a time frame and deadlines, is quite challenging.

“Brands need to understand the practical realities of dynamic creative measurement before implementation. Creating and monitoring hundreds (leave alone thousands) of creatives can be counterproductive if one is looking for time bound efficiencies. It is also important to note that the data on user behavior may not always hold relevance from a marketing standpoint. In such cases, brands should plan marketing campaigns strategically to reach out to consumers and improve ROI,” says Verma.

While it is a clear leap in advertising, there are some considerations before using it.

“The brand task at hand should be very clear before making multiple creatives which can run in several thousands. There should be a genuine need to understand the response to different aspects of the creatives with different audience sets. Using dynamic creatives requires a new approach to working, new partners, new assets and new tools. There is investment involved in creating and supporting the multiple assets and it should be considered before taking the leap,” expounds Gulati.

Growth in the future

While dynamic search and banner ads have been around for a few years now, there have been significant advancements with respect to optimisation. According to Rupani, dynamic video ads haven't reached their potential.

“Video advertising is already one of the best ways of creating an emotional connect with audiences and I expect dynamic videos to make that even better. Dynamic video ads provide brands with the opportunity to maximize their success by using multiple permutations and combinations of copy and creative to enrich the experience for users,” he explains.

Gulati sees a much higher adoption rate in the future.

“Given the high relevance of this solution to meet consumer and advertisers needs, I see a higher degree of adoption across marketers for this solution. I also see it evolving with more tools being developed to make it more advertiser friendly.”