Before creating your interactive campaign, it's better if you set up your sequence first, so that you can have a clearer idea of the stories you will have to create.

Connected Stories Journey Designer is the tool the allows to create sequences of video ads based on 1st and 3rd party data.

SETTING UP A SEQUENCE

1. To access the Journey Designer, enter into the Format level and click on the "Journey Designer" tab in the navigation menu on the left; 

2. Firstly, give a "Name" to your new sequence;

3. Then you can start to drag and drop all the blocks you need. Remember that every sequence always begins with a User Data block that represents the beginning of the consumer journey of each single user. 

THREE MAIN BLOCKS FOR A SEQUENCE

When setting up a sequence, you can find three types of boxes:

1. Blue - If Then Else

2. Light Blue - Switch

3. Orange - Stage

1.

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ifthenelse ifthenelse

IF THEN ELSE: 

This block allows you to set conditions and sub-conditions to further breakdown your sequence. 
The Journey Designer includes 1st party conditions and even 3rd party conditions that can be easily selected through a dynamic drop-down list.

See below how to insert an "If then else" box:

1. To insert an "If Then Else" block just drag and drop the block on the left top corner into your main framework;

2. Name the block;

3. Define the conditions: you can setup a block to have a true output if "All", "None", or "Any" of the conditions are met;

4. Save your new block;

5. Each "If then else" block has one input and two outputs: to link blocks you need to drag and drop the arrow from a block to another one;

6. The two outputs need to be connected to a respective block each representing an answer to the condition. They are:

   1. True (green-labeled)

   2. False (red-labeled).  

If this is your first block, connect "User Data" block to it.

For a detailed list of all the Journey Designer's conditions visit the Conditions section.

The image above gives a sample on how to set up a condition. In this case it has been chose the "Video View" one: it will be true if more than 25% of the whole video duration has been seen by the user.

2. 

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switch switch

SWITCH:

This block behaves like the "If Then Else" one with the only difference that it has one output and as many outputs you need. 

1. To insert a "Switch" block just drag and drop the block on the left top corner into your main framework

2. Name the block;

3. Define the conditions: you can setup a block to have a true output if "All", "None", or "Any" of the conditions are met;

4. Save your new block;

5. Each "Switch" block has one input and many outputs you want: to link blocks you need to drag and drop the arrow from a block to another one;

6. The outputs need to be connected to a respective block each representing an answer to the condition. If this is your first block, connect "User Data" block to it.

For a detailed list of all the conditions visit the Conditions section.

3.  

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stage stage

STAGE:

This block represents each single story of your sequence. It is key to remember that in a sequence you can add as many stages as the number of stories you have to create.

1. To insert a "Stage" block just drag and drop the block on the left top corner into your main framework;

2. Name the block according to the respective stage of the consumer journey in that specific sequence or in a way that you will able to recognize it from the others;

3. Save your new block;

4. Each "Stage" block has only one input: to link blocks to their condition, you need to drag and drop the arrow from a block to another one;

After setting your Consumer Journey, you can always go back anytime and adjust its parts according to your furnished stories or changes you want to make in the sequence.

Thanks to our Journey Designer's versioning, you will able to optimize your sequence at any time without losing track of your old sequence: you can save different versions of the same sequence and easily switch from one to another without the need of building a new one. You can create multiple versions of the same sequence both when setting up a campaign and on the flight, if needed.
This feature is also particularly useful for those who intend to do any A/B testing during an ongoing campaign to see which sequence might perform better according to the campaign's KPIs.

Below a sample sequence execution following a consumer journey of 4 main stages: Awareness, Engagement, Consideration and Conversion.

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TIP: It is key to appreciate how the consumer journey is a non-linear path. Every user goes from A to Z in a different way and not necessarily going through all the intermediate stages. The beauty of the Journey Designer is that users don't get stuck into stages they don't belong to. Everybody is unique and the Journey Designer can take into consideration everybody's unique behavior.

LINK EACH STAGE TO ITS STORY

Once you have set up your sequence and created all the stories you need (see here how to create one), all is left to do is to link each stage (orange box) to the respective story in your campaign.

Below we explain step by step how to do this:

1. Enter into the "Story" level: there you will see all the story you have created within a single format;

2. Select the three dots on the right side of a story to open a drop down list;

3. Choose "Edit";

4. There you will se the same "Story Data" window as when you created that story;

5. Stage: next to the field "stage" you will see another drop down list with all the stages and the names you gave to each one when you created your Journey Designer' sequence;

6. Choose the corresponding stage name to the story you are working on;

7. Click "Save" on the button at the end of the page;

8. Repeat for all the other stories.

NEXT STEP: Journey Designer Conditions >>