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Different from any other platform, the campaign creation process doesn't start with randomly designing and assembling the creatives. It starts by breaking down the consumer journey and defining the sequence of messages that will  be presented to the targeted audience at each state of the journey.

Once the journey and its stages have been defined, the creatives can assemble the units and associate them to a particular stage of the journey. This is what we call the Connected-Stories Approach.

The workflow is then defined into 4 stages: PlanCreateDeliverLive.

1)  Plan: Define the Consumer Journey

Connected-Stories provides the Journey Designer, a visual tool that allows you to define all the stages of the consumer path to purchase and the transition from one stage to another. The Journey Designer also provides you with the option of using one of our highly optimized default sequences.

To make things even easier, Connected-Stories provides a number of default sequences to choose and can be used right away. Default Sequences are previously designed sequences effectively used in other campaigns and therefore highly optimized to yield the best results (click on the link to view the available templates).

To see how to setup a sequence see the Journey Designer section.  

2) Create: Build Your Stories

Collect, gather or create the needed assets for your campaign sequence (as defined in step 1).  Upload these identified assets (videos, images, etc.) into the Connected-Stories media library and then start building the actual ad units that will be used for your story.

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C-S Studio is a codeless environment designed for easily setting up any type of ad video creatives. Thanks to its intuitive interface you will able to set up all your stories faster and change them at any time.

C-S STUDIO STRUCTURE

C-S Studio is made up by two windows, one next to the other:

  • the right side window only shows the video ad you have before you uploaded. It allows to play/pause and also to move the cursor along all the timeline so that you will easily see each ad frame in order to insert widget in any moment;
  • the left side window shows the ad preview of the video ad and that's where you will have to put and move all the interactive widgets you decided to add and directly modify them on the screen.

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On C-S Studio interactive widgets can be easily assembled on the video ad through more than 15 templates that will help you to create the most dynamic and engaging stories for your target audience.

The story creation process is organized into three main steps: Campaign, Format, Story.

IMPORTANT: Each campaigns contains a set of formats (display, social, etc.) and consequentially each format contains a set of stories based on the sequence applied to each campaign. For instance, if a sequence composed of three stages is applied to each format of a campaign, then each format will contain three stories each.

  • Add a Campaign

The campaign houses all your interconnected ad units, this is the first piece needed to get started. In each Campaign you'll be able to add formats and stories. 

  • Add Formats

Under a campaign, you may include as many formats as planned.  Connected-Stories supports a wide variety of ad formats according to your needs (mobile, desktop, native and social).

To see a complete list of the formats supported and how to set them up visit the Ad Formats section.

  • Add Stories

Stories are the individual ad units that are created within each format and that you connect into a sequence, these are what your users will end up watching.  According to the sequence setup, each story will serve a different purpose at each stage of the consumer journey. 

To make the stories dynamic and engaging, Connected-Stories offers a variety of widgets that can be added to them. It is possible to design a widget sequence based on user interaction and you can add as many widgets to a story as you see fit. 

To see how to setup and edit a story visit the Stories section.

  • Storyboard

Just as the Journey Designer is to define the sequence of stories in the consumer journey, the storyboard is the tool that allows to design a sequence of widgets within a single story. Through the storyboard, you will be able to define how widgets behave within a story according to the users' interactions with it.

To learn more on how to use the Storyboard, visit the Storyboard section.

3) Deliver: Ad Export

Our platform allows you to generate ad tags and deliver them to any ad server and/or exchange to easily traffic your new Connected-Stories campaign. Once your creative is finalized and ready to be trafficked all that is left to do is export the tags.

Connected-Stories provides different exporting options for its units:

  • HTML5/JS Tag:

    These kinds of exports allow to traffic the stories in a dynamic way. Here you will be able to leverage all the magic of Connected-Stories in terms of both widgets and message sequencing.

  • JavaScript Tag

    This Ad Tag provides a higher level of interaction on the Ad Unit, for example an Expandable Unit.

  • VAST/VPAID Tags:

    These types of exports allow to deliver ad units for compliant Video Players. These types of export are only used for Prerolls and Fullscreen video formats.
  • MRAID Tag:

    This type of tag allows to traffic Connected-Stories ad within any kind of mobile app.
  • Tracking Pixel and Click Command Tag:

    This type of tag allows to keep track of impressions and clicks for unsupported third party redirect.

 To learn more about generating ad tags see the Story Ad Export section.

4) Live: Real-Time Optimization

Connected-Stories allows you to effortlessly optimize on the fly. We make data available to you the moment your campaign goes live, allowing you to see whitch formats, stories, placements, and sequences are yielding the best results. Analyze and optimize your strategy and creativities at any point in time during your campaign. When your campaign goes online, the status in the "Campaigns" page will be set on "LIVE", once that the campaign is over, the status will be changed  in "EXPIRED".

To learn more visit the Real-Time Optimization section.  


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Do you want do give shape to your idea but you can't find the right widget template? Write to us and we'll be happy to help you suggesting and developing a new widget's template that will meet all of your needs!

C-S STUDIO TIMELINE-BASED SYSTEM

On C-S Studio everything is built on timeline-based system so that you can decide when to trigger an event and eventually make it disappear at the right second. 

An event can contain an unlimited amount of interactive widgets which will have the same timecode of all the other widgets in the whole event.

You can also not assign a specific timecode to an event which will be then triggered by another widget (see here how to do it).

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In the image above you can see an example of how your events will look like: on the left you will see the timecode you've set to trigger that event and on the right the name you gave to a specific event. 

C-S STUDIO PRECISION EDITING TOOL

Once setup, each widget can be placed anywhere on the video through a precision editing tool.

C-S Studio allows you to modify any of your widgets directly on the left screen: by moving the cursor you can place your widget anywhere on the video and can you resize it to make it bigger or smaller.

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With C-S Studio you are also able to watch in real time how the video ad looks like as you move or resize the widgets. Infact, by clicking on the botton "Open preview", a new window will open on your browser showing in full-screen the interactive ad you have just set up, so that you can decide if it works well or if it needs some adjustments.

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NEXT STEP: Managing Assets >>