Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) is a technology that uses data to choose – in real time – the most relevant set of visual components to show, optimizing the brand’s creative message to be more personal to the user. In this Slideshare, Innovid provides best practices for your DCO strategy.

1. Designing a Personalization Go-To-Market Strategy:
DCO Best Practices Decoded

2. 91% OF CONSUMERS
are more likely to shop with brands who
recognize, remember, and provide
relevant offers and recommendations.
Source: Personalization Pulse Check | Accenture

3. Regardless of overall business objectives
OMNI-CHANNEL
PERSONALIZATION
DRIVES RESULTS
Source: eMarketer
Lengthened Time On Site
37.1%
Improved Sales Conversion Rates
34.2%
Improved Opportunity Creation
33.6%
Increased Pages Viewed Per Session
32.5%
Improved MQL Conversions Rates
29.3%
Faster Overall Time To Close
24.7%
Improved Lead Gen
45.9%

4. DYNAMIC CREATIVE OPTIMIZATION
Technology that uses data to choose – in real time – the most relevant
set of visual components to show, optimizing the brand’s creative
message to be more personal to the user.

5. DCO IS LARGELY MADE UP OF 3 THINGS:
DATA, CONTENT, AND STRATEGY
DATA
This is the signal or signals that are used to inform creative changes.
Open API’s, licensed and publicly accessible data feeds can all be used
– in addition to data that is owned directly by the brand.
STRATEGY
Strategy is the combination of data and content and the glue of
DCO. It defines which piece of content should change according
to which piece of data.
CONTENT
Content is a fancy way of saying creative assets. These are
the elements within the dynamic ad experience and may
contain images, videos, messaging, audio – you name it.

6. LET’S TALK DATA
Data is the first critical component. It is how we understand and relate to the audience that we’re trying
to connect with. Some data is direct attribution of your audience - for example their age, gender, or
location; while other data is more focused on what they’re interested in - like sports scores, stock
prices, or available products near them.
Time/Day of Week/Year
Innovid
Weather
AerisWeather, NOAA
Geo Location
Innovid
1st Party Data
Brand
Sports Scores + Stats
Publisher direct, ESPN
Stock Prices + Index
Publisher direct,
Bloomberg, NYSE
Government + Politics
Data.gov
News Feeds
NPR, NYT, The Guardian
Demographic
The Census, other third-
party demo providers
Auto Interest
Publisher direct,
Cars.com, Autotrader
Social Feeds
Twitter, Instagram,
Facebook, YouTube
World Heath Data
WHO, UNICEF, The UN
APIs / Feeds
Brand
Behavioral
DMP’s, DSP’s,
Trading Desks
DealerTrack
Vehicle Inventory

7. Make anything dynamic
MAPPING CONTENT TO CREATIVE
Text: Headlines, CTA, price,
legal, offer
Video: Greenscreen, slates, B-roll
Images: Logos, products, images
Styling: Colors, fonts, animation,
layout
Other: Audio, and much more…

8. DCO IS STRATEGY
The combination of data and content is strategy. Above all
else, this is the most critical part.
AUDIENCE
INTERESTS
DYNAMIC
ASSETS

9. COMMON DCO STRATEGIES
AWARENESS | Traditional awareness strategies are about you, not your audience. With
dynamic creative, your awareness strategy can be personalized to convey your brand in the best
possible light to your audience.
ENGAGEMENT | An engagement centric approach encourages consumers to be actively
engaged with brand rather than purely on the receiving end. These tactics look to create an
interactive experience for customers, allowing marketers to capture more detailed metrics about
customer interests, preferences, and more.
OFFLINE SALES | The goal of driving offline commerce is to create product and service
awareness online, allowing potential customers to research different offerings online and then
visit the local brick-and-mortar store to make a purchase.
ONLINE SALES | An online sales approach focuses around driving users to convert on a site
action. Dynamic creative greatly improves the chances to convert, featuring personalized
messaging by audience interests and visibility into what creative combinations perform best
against that specific KPI.

10. PHASE 1
IDENTIFY
OPPORTUNITY
Think about stakeholders and collaboration at each stage
HOW TO GET STARTED | DEVELOPMENT PHASES
PHASE 3
STRATEGY
BUILD &
ACTIVATION
PHASE 2
STRATEGY
FEASIBILITY
PHASE 5
LEARN &
OPTIMIZE
PHASE 4
CREATIVE
VERSIONING &
TRAFFICKING

11. Identify the opportunity, KPIs, and desired business outcome
PHASE 1
Campaign Initiative / Purpose
Campaign Timing
Target Audience
Desired KPIs / Outcomes
REQUIREMENTS CONTRIBUTORS
ROLE
Consult on best
practices across
media, creative,
and data strategy
ROLE
Identify target
audience and
media plan based
on brand needs
ROLE
Provide purpose
desired outcomes
and KPI’s
ROLE
Should be aware of
data signals,
device, and media
platforms
Media PlatformCreativeBrand
OUTPUT
Identified opportunity, timing and desired business outcomes
1 2 3 4 5

12. Determine feasibility of strategy including data sources, targeting strategy, etc…
PHASE 2
Identified Opportunity
Media (partners, inventory, device)
Creative (assets, base pre-roll)
Data Strategy Discussion
REQUIREMENTS CONTRIBUTORS
ROLE
Provide strategy
feasibility and
timing expectations
ROLE
Identify media
inputs, discuss
data signals, and
audience mapping
ROLE
Provide input
and feedback
on strategies
ROLE
Identify creative
assets, discuss
dynamic mapping,
and components
Media PlatformCreativeBrand
OUTPUT
Initial strategy approved by all stakeholders
1 2 3 4 5

13. Build serving logic, dynamic template, and data feed
PHASE 3
Defined Dynamic Strategy
Defined Data Signals
Defined Creative Mapping
Defined Audience Mapping
REQUIREMENTS CONTRIBUTORS
ROLE
Build strategy, test
data signals, and
build dynamic
template
ROLE
Finalize data
signals and
complete
audience and
creative mapping
ROLE
Review and
approve data
mapping and
messaging
ROLE
Approve dynamic
template
Media PlatformCreativeBrand
OUTPUT
Approved design direction, creative and data mapping, and strategy, as well as timeline to launch
1 2 3 4 5

14. Version creative, QA, and traffic campaign
PHASE 4
Approved Template
Approved Strategy
Approved Data / Audience Mapping
Final Media Plan
REQUIREMENTS CONTRIBUTORS
ROLE
Version creative
based on template,
QA, and traffic
campaign
ROLE
Provide final
media plan and
brief for trafficking
ROLE
Final sign off on all
inputs (media plan,
versions, etc.)
ROLE
Provide final sign
off on dynamic
creative versions,
based on template
Media PlatformCreativeBrand
OUTPUT
Dynamic campaign goes live!
1 2 3 4 5

15. Gather learnings and optimize
PHASE 5
REQUIREMENTS CONTRIBUTORS
ROLE
Design, build, and
traffic any updates
based on
recommended
updates
ROLE
Review analytics
against campaign
KPIs
ROLE
Advise on brand
strategy and
creative
optimizations
ROLE
Provide additional
creative assets, if
needed as strategy
evolves
Media PlatformCreativeBrand
OUTPUT
Optimization according to advertiser best practices
1 2 3 4 5
Live Campaign
Advertiser Best Practices

16. GET
FOCUSED
Don’t test too
much at once –
have clear KPIs
and a test plan in
place.
Avoid the most common DCO mistakes with upfront planning
BEST PRACTICES WHEN PLANNING FOR DCO
BE
SPECIFIC
Clearly define the
data needed
upfront and how it
will influence the
creative.
GET
ORGANIZED
Establish naming
conventions and
general standards
for creative and
assets.
DOUBLE-CHECK
DATA
Avoid external
data bandwidth
issues by mirroring
data sources
where possible vs.
calling to the
source directly.
SET
RULES
Determine
creative rules for
rendering dynamic
elements in
worst/best case
scenarios.
1 2 3 4 5

17. Consider the following when planning your dynamic template
BEST PRACTICES WHEN DESIGNING FOR DCO
NUMBER OF ASSETS
Consider the number of product shots or
images you need to showcase and if
animation or transitions are required.
FILE SIZE
Consider how the images will render
differently across devices. Source images
will be compressed for display creatives.
Do the images need to be modified in any
way to work across multiple devices?
FILE TYPE
Consider what image file types will be
needed for the various elements.
LENGTH
Consider your longest and shortest sets of
messaging to make sure your layout will
accommodate them both.
TREATMENT
Understand that font rendering web browsers
will not be identical to your files.
ALIGNMENT
Is the text going to appear over an image or
on a solid background color? Is it legible?
How should it be aligned?
FONTS
Try to limit to 1-2 fonts where possible as
embedding fonts in display creative is
counted as file size.
TEXT VIDEOSIMAGES
LENGTH
Consider the length of the video when
deciding where to add dynamic messaging.
Video length can also be extended using
dynamic start / mid or end cards.
ELEMENTS
Remember that base videos can be be
recreated to support dynamic elements.
Existing content on end frames such as offer
messaging, logos, animations etc can be
recreated to include dynamic content.
AUDIO
When deploying an end card, decide whether
to end audio early or provide custom dynamic
audio for each version.

18. IS DCO RIGHT FOR YOU?
DCO is an incredibly powerful tool to connect with audiences but it’s not a silver bullet. When considering dynamic creative, you need to
carefully review your budget, scale, media mix, KPIs, creative assets, and available data sources.
● When deploying a simple mass awareness
strategy where the creative doesn’t need to
change.
● When your impression volume is less than 100k
USE DCO DON’T USE DCO
● When you need to create more than 20-plus
creative versions.
● When you want to personalize your message to
an individual audience or interest.
● When you anticipate a high volume of changes
throughout the lifetime of a campaign.
● When you want to test and learn which creative
messages are driving the best performance.
● When you want to be more relevant to events or
context.
● When your large product catalog or inventory
fluctuates rapidly.

19. Innovid is the only independent omni-channel advertising and
analytics platform built for television. We use data to enable the
personalization, delivery, and measurement of ads across the
widest breadth of digitally enabled channels in the market
including TV, video, display, social, and OOH. Innovid serves a
global client base of brands, agencies, and publishers through
over twelve offices across the Americas, Europe, and Asia
Pacific.
To learn more, visit Innovid.com