The Connected-Stories Approach.
Differently from any platform, the campaign creation process doesn't start with randomly designing and assembling the creativities. The process starts by breaking down the customer journey (Awareness, Engagement, Conversion..) and defining relevant set of messages according to each stage of the journey.
After defining the journey and its stages, the creative team can assemble the units and define the where to place them in sequence. Connected-Stories AI according to campaign's objective then suggests the setup for the conditions at each status of the sequence. This is what we call the Connected-Stories Approach.
The workflow is then divided into 4 stages: Planning, Setup, Delivery, Live.
- Planning: Define the customer journey according to the targeted audience, campaign's objective, placement and product advertised. See the Journey Designer section for more details.
- Setup: Upload basic assets (videos, images, etc.) to Connected-Stories media library and then start creating the actual ad units according to the sequence setup at the Conception stage with the Story Editor. See the Stories section for more details
- Delivery: Generate ad tags and deliver them to any ad server and exchange to start trafficking your new Connected-Stories campaign. To learn more about generating ad tags see the Story Ad Tags section.
- Live: Analyze and optimize your strategy and creativities at any point in time during your campaign. To learn more about optimization visit the Real-Time Optimization section.
Create a Campaign
Different from any other platform, the campaign creation process doesn't start with randomly designing and assembling the creativities. it starts by breaking down the customer journey and defining the sequence of messages to 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: Planning, Setup, Delivery, Live.
1) Planning: Define the Customer Journey
Define the customer journey according to your target audience & your product offering, your campaign & your objectives and the timing & your media placements (advertisements).
Once you defined the customer journey, you will then be able to start building your campaign's story through the Journey Designer. The Journey Designer allows you to build sequences at each status/stage of the customer journey. Based on the conditions used and the users’ interaction, a specific ad unit/story is shown to them.
To make things even easier, Connected-Stories provides a number of default sequences to choose from 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) Setup: Create Connected 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 to be used for your story.
After uploading the assets, you can begin the process of creating your stories.
The story creation process is divided into three main steps: Campaign, Format, Story.
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 (in accordance to the media plan as well). Connected-Stories has the basic ad formats (mobile, desktop, native, and landing pages) available and can customize according to your need.
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 you connect into a sequence. These are what the end-users will be seeing and interacting with - each story is a different piece of the customer journey. According to the sequence setup, each story will serve a different purpose at each stage of the customer journey.
To make the stories dynamic and engaging, Connected-Stories offers a variety of widgets that can be added to them. You can add as many widgets to a story as you see fit. On top of that, it is possible to design a widget sequence based on user interaction in every single story. The Storyboard will allow you to do so.
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 customer 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) Delivery: Ad Export
Generate ad tags and deliver them to any ad server and exchange to start trafficking your new Connected-Stories campaign.
Once your creative is finalized and ready to be trafficked all is left to do is exporting the stories.
Connected-Stories provides different exporting options for its units:
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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
VAST/VPAID Tags:
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MRAID Tag:
To learn more about generating ad tags see the Story Ad Tags section.
4) Live: Real-Time Optimization
Analyze and optimize your strategy and creativities at any point in time during your campaign.
Connected-Stories allows to optimize your campaign on the fly without the need to issue new tags, going through an approval process, or having to wait the end of the campaign to finally be able to look at your own data. We make data available since the beginning of each a campaign and this allows to see what formats, stories, placements, and sequences are yielding the best results.
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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.
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.
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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).
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.
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.
