Call it the lovechild of dynamic creative optimization and contextual advertising.
On Thursday, audio marketing platform Instreamatic released a product for connected TV that generates multiple audio variations for the same creative.
The visuals stay the same, but Instreamatic uses AI to swap in different details for the voiceover, such as naming the specific streaming service and/or TV show a viewer is watching or mentioning specific promo codes, products or deals at certain store locations.
The idea is to produce hundreds or even thousands of personalized versions of the same CTV ad in seconds.
Instreamatic generates a unique video ad-serving template (VAST) tag for each audio track so that advertisers can traffic the creative through any demand-side platform.
According to Instreamatic, these are contextual ads, because they don’t rely on personal information to address the specific environment in which a viewer is engaging.
This is arguably a liberal definition of the term “contextual” – and Instreamatic isn’t alone in coopting contextual as a more privacy-safe and less fraught approach to targeting.
But Instreamatic itself doesn’t collect user data or have direct integrations with publishers, said Co-Founder and CEO Stas Tushinskiy. It merely helps advertisers make personalized creative, and it’s up to buyers to apply audience-based targeting, such as location, through their DSP or ad server.
Power in numbers
The ad creation process is designed to be as simple as possible.
Advertisers upload video creative and ad copy, choose a voice actor from Instreamatic’s library and the system spits out different audio tracks using interchangeable terms that the buyer selects, such as app name or streaming platform.
An example could sound like this: “We know you want to get back to watching ‘Friends’ on Max. But first, why don’t you check out this discount for Patty’s Pizza on First Street?”
In that case, “Friends,” “Max,” “Patty’s Pizza” and “First Street” could all be automatically swapped for other relevant terms. The audio could just as easily be, “We know you want to get back to watching ‘South Park’ on Paramount Plus. But first, why don’t you check out this discount for Patty’s Pizza on Second Street?” (assuming the fictional Patty’s pizzeria has multiple locations).
And so on.
Instreamatic’s dashboard has a checklist of streaming services to select from, and the option to manually input more individualized information, like store-specific offers and audio voiceover variations based on gender and/or device type.
For example, there might be different versions of an ad designed for someone streaming on their phone versus watching on their smart TV.
But the actual targeting of these ads to reach specific audiences is left to advertisers and their publisher partners.
If a publisher is willing to share anonymized IP addresses or opted-in device IDs for audience targeting, for example, advertisers can geotarget their Instreamatic creative. But if a publisher only chooses to share more aggregated location information, such as ZIP codes, then the campaign targeting will be less granular.
According to Tushinskiy, if advertisers share their tracking pixels with Instreamatic, they can also use its platform to A/B test ad creative by measuring impressions and performance metrics, such as click-through rate.
“The focus is to optimize creatives for advertisers,” he said.
Give me more context
The question, however, still stands: Why is Instreamatic calling its CTV ad product contextual, rather than dynamic creative optimization?
For one, contextual advertising is pretty hot right now.
But Instreamatic isn’t just taking advantage of buzz. It considers its product to be contextual because rather than creating audio tracks for ads based on personal information, it’s creating many variations of ads based on a range of potential scenarios that advertisers can use to reach specific audiences.
“Our goal is to personalize ad creatives” without regard to how an advertiser might want to use them for targeting or retargeting, Tushinskiy said.
What matters, he said, is helping advertisers scale personalized creatives by “contextualizing them based on essentially any parameter.”
