The Power of Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) Beyond Retargeting

Many advertisers are using dynamic creative optimization (DCO) for retargeting high-value website visitors who, based on their actions on the brand’s website — such as visiting product pages and adding items to shopping carts — have shown purchasing intent. Advertisers get a second chance to drive a conversion. Retargeting is a proven, always-on tactic for most advertisers. DCO allows deeper personalization of retargeted ads, driving better engagement and performance.

While we hear a lot about using DCO for retargeting, what about employing DCO for prospecting campaigns?

Advertisers can use DCO across the marketing funnel — for everything from retargeting and loyalty programs to new- customer acquisition and awareness campaigns. Even if very little is known about the audience or user that is viewing the ad, DCO can deliver a lift in performance. For one Adobe customer, using algorithmic creative optimization for geotargeted campaigns resulted in a 10-percent lift in click-through rate (CTR) over standard display ads. The more we know about the audiences across the funnel, the better the performance. Performance results for this brand ranged from a 10-percent lift in CTR for prospecting campaigns to a 71-percent lift in performance when retargeting users who visited specific property pages.

Target Audiences Across the Funnel With DCO.

Algorithmic Creative Optimization
For prospecting campaigns, the creative elements within the ad — images, border and button colors, messages, offers, call-to-action text, data-feed components, and recommended products, for instance — are optimized to meet the advertiser’s performance objectives. An advertiser could simply target their ads by region or zip code and allow DCO to optimize the ad’s creative elements to drive the best engagement and performance.

The DCO algorithm evaluates all possible ad permutations and optimizes delivery to the winner. Below is a simplified example.

Advertisers are able to turn creative optimization on or off as desired. For retargeting campaigns, an advertiser may prefer to set rules to drive ad-content decisions using the data feed. When the feature is turned on, customizable settings like lookback window and optimization performance indicators (clicks, conversions) are activated.

Other Cool DCO Capabilities
DCO has many features that can help deliver better performances for your prospecting and retargeting campaigns. Personalize your ads with DCO and spice them up with some of these features:

• Promotion Countdown Clock: Your ad includes a timer that counts down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds until your next sale, promotion — or the weekend.
• Search Box: Users can search for city location, zip code, product, and more.
• Drop-Down Menu: Users can select an option from the menu and be directed to a relevant landing page.
• Product Carousel: Users can scroll through product recommendations within the ad.
• Retail Circular Ads: Promote products from weekly circular ads within the ads.
• Product Price Comparison: Within the ad, you can show your low price compared to competitors’ rates.
• Adobe Marketing Cloud Audiences: Both Adobe Analytics and Adobe Audience Manager segments can trigger an ad layout in DCO for deeper personalization. Audience Manager segments can include first-, second-, and third-party data.

Moving Beyond Retargeting to Get the Most of DCO
DCO allows an advertiser to target audiences across the marketing funnel. Beyond using DCO for reconnecting with and retargeting site visitors, advertisers can use DCO to deliver relevant experiences and better performances — for new-customer acquisition and awareness programs — and help fill the upper marketing funnel. Consider applying the full power of DCO to all your marketing programs to deliver deeper personalization and more relevant experiences for your users as they travel through the customer journey.

This is the fourth article in a five-part series on DCO. Check out the first three articles:

1. 5 Reasons Now Is the Time to Implement Dynamic Creative
2. Creating Relevant Ad Experiences Without Thousands of Ad Units
3. Supercharge your Retargeting Campaigns with Dynamic Creative

And stay tuned to learn more about what DCO can do for advertisers.