Advertisers want to know what their audiences will see whenever they build an ad. For most of history, this was a reasonable expectation. Now, in a world ruled by dynamic creative, the biggest hurdle for advertisers is relinquishing this most basic level of control over their final product―and understanding why it’s to their benefit.
Facebook offers this simple definition of its dynamic creative advertising platform: “Dynamic creative takes multiple media (images, videos) and multiple ad components (such as images, videos, text and calls-to-action) and then mixes and matches them in new ways to improve your ad performance. It allows you to automatically create personalized creative variations for each person who views your ad, with results that are scalable.” Google’s description of its dynamic creative tool is much more technical, but the philosophy underpinning both tools is the same. By delegating the final choice of images, words, and calls to action to Meta (Facebook’s parent company) and Alphabet (Google’s parent company), advertisers are effectively conceding that a sophisticated algorithm can tailor an ad to human consumers better than human advertisers.
It’s a major shift in how advertisers do business. And while it didn’t happen overnight, Google/Alphabet recently imposed a deadline for shifting all new advertising campaigns over to its dynamic creative model. On June 30, Google notified its advertising clients that “responsive search ads will be the only search ad type that can be created or added in in standard search campaigns … you’ll no longer be able to create expanded text ads.” The company allowed any static ad campaigns created before June 30 to be “grandfathered in” to the new system.
While this might seem like a classic example of a big corporation strong-arming the little guy, it’s difficult to argue the reasoning behind the shift. Dynamic creative advertisements work. Engagement rates are relatively high. So are clickthrough rates. While they require more work from advertisers upfront ― specifically, organizing and uploading images and text for the algorithms to sort through ― algorithms must also perform many of the mundane tasks previously reserved for humans.
It’s still a tough sell for copywriters, some of whom have spent decades crafting stories on their own from start to finish. Now, they must tell that story without knowing how each element will fit together when seen by individual users. One ad might ultimately have 40,000 different versions, with only an algorithm “knowing” which version is optimal to present to individual viewers. That’s why uploading a broad spectrum of visual and text elements are important. An algorithm can study a user’s browsing behavior and group affiliations ― one might prefer dogs, another babies, another nature photography ― to display a version of the ad based on what’s most resonant to them.
Not only does an AI-driven dynamic creative tool select the images and text most relevant to the target audience, it helps circumvent “creative fatigue” ― when users are served the same ad in their feed over and over again. A repetitive static ad might cause a Facebook or Instagram user to log off, or block or mute the user showing the ad. By constantly alternating images and text, a quick-scrolling user might not even realize they have been served an ad from the same campaign twice.
Dynamic creative does not lose its power outside the Meta and Google environments. A display ad on a website powered by a dynamic creative algorithm will appear more relevant to the specific environment than a static ad. Using several different iterations for a single campaign, the presentation can align visually with what the user is trying to read on the specific website they are viewing. If they’re jumping from a healthcare site to a travel site to a sports site, the same ad can take three different forms to blend seamlessly with its surroundings.
So, what can’t dynamic creative do? If an advertiser wants to run an A/B test of their dynamic creative campaign before placing it on Meta, the test can still determine things an algorithm cannot ― for example, whether a series of images and words that played well in the New York market will be just as effective with a large ad buy in Los Angeles. In that way, advertisers and their clients still have some say over who will see which ads. For now, the reign of dynamic creative is just beginning. Static ad buys still rule over certain corners of the internet. It will only be a matter of time before dynamic creative becomes the norm for all advertisers, a change everyone in the industry must adapt to.