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Ad-Lib, Google Display & Video 360 Integration Connects Creative, Media, Claims First Rights

Ad-Lib on Monday will announce a direct integration with Google Display & Video 360 (DV360), providing clients with an easy way to combine creative and media workflows to boost campaign performance.

Oli Marlow Thomas, Ad-Lib founder and president -- who worked at Google as the creative lead at DoubleClick for five years before breaking away to create and build the company -- has been pushing creative into the technology process for years to run against line items and targeting strategies.

"It used to be those targeting strategies were assembled manually, but now we can pull the strategies from a demand side platform and assemble them to run against the creative media strategies," he said.

The API connects programmatic media technology with the creative processes to collaborate on campaigns. Historically the two processes lived in silos.

The DV360 integration allows Ad-Lib to take information that sits in a DSP, such as the targeting strategy, and combine it with the creative side of the campaign.

Google released the API as a way for third parties to interact with the DSP through programmatic channels after locking down the data and completely closing it off to arbitrary channels.

Marlow Thomas claims this is the first integration of its kind, but acknowledges others will soon follow.

Nissan United Uses The API

Nissan United, a part of TBWA/Chiat/Day, is the first to acknowledge the benefits. Nissan United Media Business Director Richard Fitzgerald says the company is excited by the impact and the results.

Marketers at Coca-Cola, Google, J&J, Reckitt, and Virgin Media also work with Ad-Lib. All have access to the platform.

In addition to Google DV360, Ad-Lib also ingrates with Google Campaign Manager, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, among others. The company also will soon announce an integration with TikTok.

Forthcoming Integration With TikTok

The integration with TikTok is different. For starters, the company is new to the space. It is less focused on personalization. They are more interested in “creative refreshes.” Similar to Facebook, Marlow Thomas says, they don’t want their viewers exposed to the same ad repeatedly.  

Ad-Lib CEO Adit Abhyankar, who joined the company in November 2019 after spending five years at Google, said Google is both a technology provider and a publisher. Google DV360 is technology that enables the purchase of media on a variety of platforms.

“Imagine one day, if TikTok let them, Google could buy media on the platform,” he said, providing an example of the difference. “Facebook and TikTok do not put their inventory on DV360 because they would rather sell it themselves.”

Benefits From Integration With Google DV360

As for Google, the company has not really focused on building technology to support the creative process. They are focused more on the media side, Abhyankar said.

“At Google we showed that 70% of what drives campaign performance is the creative,” Abhyankar said. “We also see this massive bias on how brands are trying to drive their campaigns better. In other words they focus on using media and they’re not nearly as focused on using creative.”

Ad-Lib’s DV360 solution allows collaboration between workflows and interoperability between platforms for agency and brand creative and media teams that formerly struggled with complex processes and technology, and rapidly changing privacy policies.

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