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Whitepaper 1:

How automation impacts the creative production process

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Oli Marlow-ThomasFounder, Ad-Lib Digital

Our aim with this paper is to explore why it is

challenging for most brands to build good digital

creative that is relevant to their audience and look

at how technology can help with this process.

Ad-Lib believes that digital creative should be better

than traditional creative in every way. It should be

both better designed and data-driven. Digital

creative should react fast to events, be more

accurate in its messaging, improve user experience

and drive better business outcomes. Adoption of

technology platforms allow production efficiency at

scale and the ability to build creative assets well

suited to each format. These capabilities, which

together are the core of Ad-Lib’s value proposition,

unlock new and exciting possibilities for brands,

which we will explore further in this research.

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“My biggest challenge is creating and delivering digital creative cross-channel, cross-format and on best practice.

“ “

Alexis Herail Nestlé Global Head of content

Cannes Lions, 2019

Content

“How automation impacts the creative production process.”

Whitepaper 1: 1:

1.

2.

How digital has changed the traditional creative production process:

a. Boom and growth of digital mediab. Digital creative reworked from offline assetsc. Performance impact of limiting variants

(Page 4)(Page 5)(Page 6)

Where has the industry got to with automation?

a. What can be automated?b. Impact of siloed areas of automationc. Results of automation

(Page 7) (Page 8)(Page 9)

3.Forecasting the impact of automation on production for brandsa. Savings and Performance Gains, Forecast (Page 10)

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4

2018 2019 2020 2021

Digital vs. Traditional Ad SpendingUnited States, 2018-2021

Traditional media ad spending

Digital ad spending (billions)

$114

.84

$108

.64

$109

.48

$129

.34

$107

.13

$151

.29

$104

.32

$172

.29

Source: eMarketer, Feb 2019

First display banner: AT&T ad on hotwired.com - 25 years old Oct 2019

Google trends data - UX and Big Data search terms 2004 - present

To understand the reason for this, you can look back at the history of digital, which started off as a much smaller part of the media plan and where originally digital inventory formats tried to mimic that of TV and print formats - specifically so that the creative assets already built could easily be used on the new digital formats. However a quick reality check shows that this year (2019), 25 years after the first display banner was bought by AT&T on hotwired.com, digital spend is set to outpass that of traditional within the US. The internet has moved away from its print roots in 25 years… and the process that used to work in the early days is now desperately broken.

This is a fundamental change in the digital landscape, leaving a gap in the creative agency output vs the channel. Use of big data and optimised UX are now at the forefront of digital necessity. Exacerbated to a business critical point by changing shifts in media investment.

How digital has changed the traditional creative production process?

1.CHALLENGE: Boom and growth of digital media

How digital has changed the traditional creative production process?

1.CHALLENGE: Digital creative is reworked from offline assets

Simplified creative agency ways of working:

Ensuring alignment and agreeing scope of work

Comms Brief

Coming to the core message of the response

Big Idea

Deciding on the channel brief for message delivery

Execution

Normally planned around TV as a channel + available audiences

Channels:TV, Radio, Print, Digital

Creation of all assets needed for the execution

Production

5

In order to take a look at how automation can impact the digital creative production process, we first have to look at the current situation. Most brands use traditional creative agencies as the starting point for most of their production processes. They follow 4 major steps (as shown on the right), regardless of whether they are producing content for seasonal, product focused, always on, e-commerce or brand-led campaigns.

This has worked well over the years for content targeted to advertisers largest media buys, however the digital content is usually limited and often an after-though.

The typical output of this process for digital is:

6 x display banners

2 x video cut downs

4 x social assets

The reality of the process is closer to this:

All of the above is completed for offline channels and Digital is not considered through the planning or production process.

Above completed for offline channels

Print reworked to banners & social

TVC cut down to 15’ edit

DIGITAL EXECUTION

1-2YEARS OUT

6 MONTHS

3 MONTHS

2 MONTHS

6

0.00%

0.10%

0.20%

0.30%

Variants per 100,000

CVR CTR

What is the performance impact of not creating more variants?

It is huge, numbers measure for Ad-Lib clients are below:

For Adidas the inclusion of just 6 variants per format over the single variant planned increased the conversion rate by 12%. - See adidas case study.

At scale these numbers continue to show gains, across collective Ad-Lib clients: If go from less than 1 variant per 100,000 impressions, to more than 33 variants per 100,000 we see CVR average jump 11%, and CTR jump by 500%.

So we have highly spiralling costs of production, but with significant resulting performance. Which brings us to the question… What if these costs didn’t increase based on numbers of variants? Or formats?

This brings us to the current state of automation.

Less than 1 Less than 5 Less than 30 More than 30

How digital has changed the traditional creative production process?

1.CHALLENGE: Performance impact of limiting variants

7

● Cross format● Cross platform

● Transcreation● Personalisation

● Cropping● Positioning

Image

Copy

Design

Stage

Responsibility

Building banners

& delivery

Ad-T

raffi

ckin

g

Assi

gnm

ent t

o ta

rget

ing

& r

epor

ting

Appr

oval

Ideation Post production

Approval Trafficking

Creative agency/brand team

In-house team, creative agency or partner

Brand/ partner

Media agency

The process of delivering an advert to a user online requires a lot of moving parts, from the creative agency, through the brand to the media agency, and into technology which talks to technology. Below is a broad sense of what is being done to deliver an impression to a user through display advertising:

This is a complex ecosystem which passes on an increase in workload, and therefore costs, throughout the process. Without automation, more variations = more costs, as discussed in the earlier section. With automation in one area we may make it possible to drive more variants there, but the knock on costs may negate the savings. If we produce loads more creative variants using automation at no extra cost, but still have manual trafficking, then the increased cost of trafficking will impact the savings across builds and we will continue to want to limit variations due to costing.

Where has the industry got to with automation

2.SOLUTION: What can be automated

8

Asset bank:- Images- Video- Copy

Solving variations without banner builds, but increasing requests on many other areas.

User:Monday morning -

London -

Signals need passing back into DCO through

integration

Trafficking needs vary depending on technology

Rule based feed for assets against signals into a designed template.

Each element needs to be built for each format

“DCO”All need editing, organising and storage for each format

There are lots of areas of automation we see throughout this process, with some annotation below on where this is manifesting. The major question remains whether these savings are being passed onto the client, and if automating one area is creating more challenges through other areas.

● Cross format● Cross platform

● Transcreation● Personalisation

● Cropping● Positioning

Image

Copy

Design

Stage

Building banners

& delivery

Ad-T

raffi

ckin

g

Assi

gnm

ent t

o ta

rget

ing

& r

epor

ting

Appr

oval

Ideation Post production

Approval Trafficking

Image sourcing through lookup vs portfolio/ stock

Some AI engines on copywriting, with voice activation & chat bots driving

Tricky from scratch, but increasingly using scoring to understand best practice

AI with some human changes

Human assisted translation with workflow

AI with some human changes

‘DCO’ with templated approach to pulling assets against data signals

Human assisted with workflow

Easily automated, many agency licensed tools

Sits within DCO capabilities

One technology which has made a major impact to the automation of variations for digital signals is Dynamic Creative Optimisation (or DCO). It solves much of the building banners and delivery task, though with nuances in integrations between providers and more use as a tactical tool for campaign delivery within markets, it doesn’t solve the problem. Below is a brief description of this technology, with some annotations showing how automation causes increasing workload for other areas:

Automation Areas

Where has the industry got to with automation

2.SOLUTION: Impact of siloed areas of automation

9

1. Trafficking

460% faster!

2. Production resizing

3. Personalisation

259% faster!(And scored as higher quality)

450% faster!(for a very modest

72 variants…)

2.5 Hours

11.5 Hours

So not to say that this can all be automated to the point of no human interaction, but the amount of areas that automation can impact looks very promising. In fact we can take some data from a few of these scenarios in time/ cost saving for our clients:

So if we combine these two factors together:

More variations increases performance.Impact of automation to remove additional costs on higher number of variants.

1.2.

2.45 Mins

7.07 Mins

0.3 Hours

2.5 Hours

Findings

Findings Findings

Findings

Forecasting the impact of automation on production for brands

3.SOLUTION: Results of automation

10

Where has the industry got to with automation on production for brands3.

IMPACT: Savings and Performance Gains, Forecast

In the previous sections we spoke about the compromises that brands were balancing across two areas, production costs and post production costs, and the impact on performance. We also discussed the impact of automation, when correctly billed, on reducing costs and restrictions to increased numbers of variants. Put together, we can forecast the total impact for businesses of automation here.

A slight increase (c1%) in creative production spend. This does vary from client to client, though most don’t see any increase (some see a decrease) we understand that in the short term there can be a slight rise as digital channels request more assets to cover their variations. We will discuss in future papers the impact on data and insight on insight and optimisation across creative production, ultimately driving long term efficiency gains, and accountability of production to performance.

A huge saving of 50-60% in post production spend.Replacement of manual process with technology will drive huge savings in this area, which is heavily man hour based, repetitive, costly and time consuming.

Performance gain of 12% against conversion metricsPerformance objectives are super subjective on the campaign, but the increases in them is not. When add more variations in, that can be optimised based on performance metrics (which can be CTR/ Brand Uplift/ Sales) there is an improvement. Performance conversions average 12% uplift… CTR? 500%.

So we have three factors when implementing automation across the production process:

1)

2)

3)

However! 2 & 3 impact each other, as much of the post production spend can be re-invested into media, which is now performing better… Let’s try to get to the bottom of this number!

Production increase

Post production

Media performance

x% increasein media performance

Av.1% increasein creative production

80% increasein post production

In the next paper in the series

OPERATING MODELS

We will look at operating models, and the resulting time savings brands are seeing from this.

Creativity in Real Time

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