• by Philip Rosenstein , July 8, 2016

As ad targeting becomes increasingly sophisticated, companies are progressively tailoring their creatives to appeal to unique users. Programmatic creative, or dynamic creative, allows advertisers to serve customized ads to individual users in real-time.

"Programmatic creative is still in its infancy but poised for huge growth," Bree Roe, VP and media director at BKV, told Real-Time Daily by email. "True programmatic creative that incorporates complex logic and audience data really only started rolling out over the last 12-18 months."

While the setup for serving programmatic creative may be tedious and will vary, direct marketing firm, BKV, describes the main steps marketers planning to use this new approach should take: First, “pre-determine the dynamic variables within a banner.” Next, “set up rules to decide what each dynamic variable should show within the creative,” and lastly, “define the user-specific triggers that inform the rules and logic.”

Data integrations play an important role in successfully implementing programmatic creative strategies. Start off simple, suggests BKV; however, limit variations until significant analyses can be made in order to better understand the success of different strategies.

The importance of the creative process is accentuated by the advent of programmatic creative, not diminished. Collecting real-time data on specific ads allows for the immediate scrapping or modification of underperforming creatives, and the promotion of thriving ones.

Creative teams, while enhanced by these developments, are absolutely integral to successfully using programmatic creative strategies.

Serving creatives in this fashion can both hone the focus of existing campaigns, but also provide important data points for upcoming ones, streamlining the strategic process. Time-sensitive campaigns, like what we see in the political sphere can greatly benefit from receiving immediate feedback on ad campaigns, and the ability to tailor ads in an extremely precise manner will further enhance strong targeting capabilities.

Efforts to execute programmatic creative strategies often show powerful results, claims BKV, stating that several “partners [see] more than a 2x increase in interaction and conversion rates.”