In this section, you will learn how to create a Connected Stories campaign taking advantage of the platform's full potential and its features.
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 the target audience, the campaign's objectives, the media placements and the products advertised.
Once you defined the customer journey, you will then be able to start building campaign's sequences through the Journey Designer. The Journey Designer allows you to build sequences defining the different statuses and the conditions behind the emission of creativities at each part of the journey.
To make things even easier, Connected-Stories offers a set of default sequences to choose from and implementable right away. Default Sequences are sequences that have been previously used in other campaigns and therefore highly optimized to yield the best results.
To see how to setup a sequence see the Journey Designer section.
2) Setup: Create Connected Stories
Upload basic assets (videos, images, etc.) into Connected-Stories media library and then start creating the actual ad units according to the sequence setup at the planning stage.
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
This is the first piece needed to get started. In each Campaign you'll be able to add formats and stories (the actual units).
- Add Formats
Under a campaign, you may include as many formats as planned in your campaign. Connected-Stories has a large number of different formats (mobile, desktop, native, and landing pages).
To see a complete list of the formats supported and how to set them up visit the Ad Formats section.
Add Stories
Stories are actual ad units. 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 would serve a different purpose at each of its stages.
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:
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:
These types of exports allow to deliver ad units for compliant Video Players. These types of export are used for Prerolls and Fullscreen only video formats.MRAID Tag:
This type of tag allows to traffic Connected-Stories within any kind of mobile app.
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.
To learn more visit the Real-Time Optimization section.