Getting an approved CTV ad creative ready for delivery is still a mostly manual process – as in, emails and spreadsheets – which may work for linear TV, where the creative and technical specs for commercials are much more consistent across channels.
But streaming ad creative can originate from almost anywhere. Some are repurposed social video assets, while others are variations generated by AI, says Ryan McConville, EVP of ad platforms and operations at NBCUniversal. As a result, the creative supply chain is pretty messy, McConville says. When it comes to the creative delivery process, he adds, “we can’t keep doing this by email.”
NBCU is one publisher attempting to bring more automation and efficiency into the streaming creative ad delivery process – and not just because it’s tired of emails. The stakes are getting higher as livestreaming sports adoption rises, McConville says.
“One of the biggest challenges of the Olympics was the creative [aspect],” he says, referring to rules, like competitive separation, that NBCU had to enforce on Peacock based on content signals associated with ad creatives in the bidstream.
That’s why, this week, NBCU launched an internal creative optimization tool it’s calling Creative Gateway, with the aim of streamlining creative ad delivery by centralizing different quality assurance checks and creative ad tech partners. The ultimate goal, McConville says, is to “fully automate all creative delivery.”
NBCU’s launch partner is XR Extreme Reach, a creative optimization platform. The plan is to add other partners down the line, but NBCU didn’t share names or a specific timeline.
Clean-up in the creative supply chain
Creative Gateway ingests information about ad creatives as soon as they’re ready through direct API integrations with creative ad serving companies, like XR, such as video ad serving template (VAST) tags and other pieces of code that track a video asset throughout the course of a campaign.
The product also checks that video assets have been converted to file sizes suitable for TV screens, McConville says, which is important when repurposing resized social assets for streaming commercials.
Then, NBCU uses machine learning to match those creatives with a campaign line item that’s already set up in an ad server.
In the past, this process would have been far more laborious. For example, NBCU would have had to download creative assets from XR’s platform before it could scan content metadata. “There was no way to communicate back and forth [directly],” McConville says, which is why NBCU expects Creative Gateway to save time and cut down on operational costs.
Still, he says, this process “would actually be a lot easier” if every piece of creative had a consistent creative ad ID, which isn’t the case today.
Creating a creative ad taxonomy
The ad industry has for years sought an ad creative taxonomy to help manage creative ad delivery across linear and streaming.
“As we automate the [creative] supply chain, it’s really critical that we also continue to talk to advertisers about the inclusion of the [Universal] Ad ID,” McConville says, referring to the creative identifier that’s common in linear TV.
“The IAB is making that [adoption] easier,” he adds.
In June, IAB Tech Lab announced its Ad Creative ID Framework, designed to streamline the use of Ad IDs across digital by defining how registered IDs accompany creatives throughout the supply chain, including measurement platforms. Greater adoption of a consistent creative ID within digital would help ease some of the biggest video marketing pain points, including frequency capping, competitive separation and cross-platform reporting.
In the meantime, however, direct integrations between publishers and creative tech partners can at least help add some consistency to how creatives are processed and labeled, says James Shears, VP of business development and client partnerships at XR. This makes it much easier for publishers to access specific information about a creative, such as a brand’s name or category, which can improve the viewing experience by delivering more relevant and less repetitive ads, he says.
The need for automation and standardization in creative ad delivery only intensifies with the proliferation of video ad creatives, including via generative AI, Shears says.
In other words, he says, expect the concept of creative identity to start taking center stage in more industry conversations about video advertising.
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