A Small Step for DCO, a Giant Leap for Creative Production Collaboration

For brand marketers, personalization of customer experiences, including advertising, is hardly a question of “IF” anymore but rather a question of “HOW”. The technology that is supposed to help brands figure out the “HOW” part has been incredibly successful in adding layers of complexity and tangling up the process, making DCO seem like science fiction. It is not! We’re moving towards a future that will make it seamless and effortless, one step at a time.

With the rise of dynamic creative and all the variants that come with it, having an overview of all the different products and sizes in a single view is necessary to keep your DCO spaceship flying smoothly.

Keep all possible variants in check

As the use of dynamic creative grows in scope and complexity, the need to have better visibility into all those dynamic variants increases. Dynamic creative driven by feeds produces hundreds or thousands of variants of a single creative across multiple sizes. For instance, if creative content changes based on different cities across the US, we’ll need to produce a large number of variants and a comprehensive functional preview to systematically review and approve them all. Typically each of these variants will be sent to reviewers as separate preview links collected in a giant spreadsheet or through direct messages.

There is a lot of guesswork involved while previewing and you, as a reviewer, will need to know your way around all those links so you can review the specific dynamic aspects you are looking for. With these challenges and inefficiencies in mind, our first objective when envisioning a new way to preview was to accommodate users with an efficient functional preview of all possible variants, side by side in a single view. Whether you are a creative producer tracking implemented design changes while building, a reviewer approving all variants, or a stakeholder trying to understand the overall strategy of your dynamic campaign, Celtra’s Campaign Explorer can help you take the first steps towards streamlined DCO campaigns.  

Visibility into campaign strategy galaxy

In Celtra Creative Management Platform (CMP), Campaign Explorer is set to provide immediate visibility into creative variants at a campaign level. As a media plan is rarely only one format and one size, creative content across all products, sizes, and formats are available in one consolidated view (and one shareable URL for that matter).

To provide the most flexibility to marketers, we developed powerful filters that help to define customized views (and scope) making it easier to preview what you need, when you need it. For example, anyone can narrow down the view by choosing a specific size, format, audience etc., even if its different from the view you decide to share.

Less frustration, more collaboration

Spotting errors has never been easier. Flipping back and forth between tabs to ensure creative experiences, design, layout, and messaging alignment is cumbersome and poses a  high risk for human error. Especially with tens or hundreds of variants — you are statistically bound to make a mistake. Well, not anymore — being able to see creatives side by side makes it much easier to spot inconsistencies. In turn, a lot of fine tuning can be taken care of prior to the official approval process, cutting down revision time while avoiding launching creatives with errors. For marketers stuck in legacy technology silos, the efficiencies gained can help them take a giant leap forward towards a world where preview, approvals, and collaboration work together to serve the business.

We are seeing more and more brands bringing creative and/or media management in-house, often with the goal of being able to move and launch campaigns faster. Creative approvals and rounds of revisions are primary suspects in delaying live dates. With the ambition to improve that and lay grounds for better and more efficient collaboration, Campaign Explorer brings the teams together (agencies or in-house) on the same journey. With designers creating ads and reviewers assessing them, the feedback loop is streamlined, eliminating frustrations and giving you more time to come up with great ideas for taking flight.