TV, Out Door & Print have been the legacy of advertising in India. Due to the inherent nature of these mediums, most of the ads which we see are ‘perfect ads’. They are the route 1/option 1 creatives that have been pitched and subsequently selected. They are supposed to be these perfect ads which “will just work”. But Do they? Well, that’s something which the industry doesn’t care about much. Most campaigns are evaluated after they have ended. Secondly, while the digital media budgets are soaring, there is little to no innovation being pursued in the space of advertising technology. A perceivable amount of reluctance by brands and marketers alike are leaving digital ad inventories under-utilized by simply placing size adapts of their offline banners! An average online user browses 20 different websites and navigates through 5-10 different apps every day. Advertisers, who understand technology, are now realising that instead of showing the user one brand ad at all ad spots, the creative team can churn out thousands of ad variations which could be triggered in real time considering the user persona, contextual targeting as well as other dynamic factors, thereby increasing the ROI multi-fold. Decoding DCO With DCO technology brands are able to automate the entire creative making process. Creatives are generated considering various factors like interest of the user, time of the day, most popular products etc with an objective to improve response of creatives. Let’s take an example of regular re-marketing. A guy goes to an e-commerce portal, looks at few products and then those products keep following him till eternity! If the user has decided not to buy it, there is a reason. Now rather than bombarding the same product to users again and again and expecting them to change their mind, brands can use DCO to create highly personalised ads for different user types in real time and influence their decision to complete the transaction. Think how a salesman treats/engages with a customer in any offline showroom. He will show related products, other designs, show products according to consumer’s budget, their liking, their reactions and so on. The same sales experience is possible in display banners today with the arrival of technologies like Programmatic Media Buying & Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO). In conclusion, the acceptance of programmatic ad buying is increasing at a rapid pace in India. All major brands that are aligned towards digital-first strategies have either already allocated programmatic ad buying as a major pie of media spends or they are getting ready to embrace it by setting up internal teams and finding vendors who can create custom solutions for them. The approach of creative making in the programmatic world is still in its nascent stage. More than 90% of the digital media is bought on a single creative - treating all users as the same. This results in suboptimal campaign performance and lower ROI on advertising spends. Continuous A/B testing of creatives ensures that key user behavioural traits are captured on statistically significant data to improve performance multi-fold. The key advantage for HockeyCurve in this scenario is that they can create a product that integrates ad tech and marketing tech. As most of the advertisers are now focusing on ROI from advertising campaigns this feature is one of our strengths. Aditya Jagtap, Co-Founder & Operations Manager, HockeyCurve