Below we show you in few lines the ideal workflow for creating a campaign on our Connected Stories platform so that you can gain the best both in terms of time and final result.

C-S workflow is simply divided into 4 main steps: 

1. Strategy Planning;
2. Format Creation;
3. Ads Delivery;
4. Campaign Monitoring.

1)   STRATEGY PLANNING: Define the Consumer Journey

Thanks to Connected Stories' Journey Designer decision tree, you can define all the stages of the consumer path and how to transition from one stage to another. It is good to set up before your sequence and then build your campaign so that you will have a clearer idea of what you need to do.

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

2)  FORMAT CREATION: 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.), that will be used for your story, into the Connected-Stories media library.

After uploading your creative assets, you can begin to build your stories: Connected-Stories offers a variety of ready-to-use templates to help you create the most dynamic and engaging stories for your target audience.

The story creation process is organized into four main steps: 

1.Add a Campaign: The campaign houses all your interconnected ad units and this is the first piece needed to get started. In each Campaign you'll be able to add as many formats and stories as you want; 

1. Click on "Add campaign" to start creating your new campaign;

2. "Name" your campaign so that you will always be able to recognize it;

3. Select the "Brand" for whom you are creating the campaign. If you don't find it in the list, click on "Add brand" to add a new one which will always be present in your brand's list;

4. Select the "Industry" to whom belongs your brand;

5. Select "Media agency" if your brand have one.

/wiki/spaces/CON/pages/525140031In a campaign you can include as many formats as planned. Connected-Stories supports a wide variety of ad formats according to your needs (mobile, desktop, Smart-L, Dynamic Frame...);

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

3. Add Stories: Stories are the individual ad units that are created within each ad format and that you connect into a sequence; these are what 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 stories more 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 interactions and add to a story as many widgets as you see fit. 

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

/wiki/spaces/CON/pages/525402185 Just as the Journey Designer is to define the stories' sequence in the consumer journey, the storyboard is a tool that allows you 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 them.

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

3)  ADS DELIVERY: Ad Export

Once you created all your stories within a campaign, C-S platform also 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 such as an expandable unit;

• VAST/VPAID Tags: These types of exports allow to deliver ad units for compliant Video Players and are only used for Preroll and Fullscreen video formats;

• MRAID Tag: This type of tag allows to traffic Connected-Stories' interactive ads 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 Ad Export section.

4)  CAMPAIGN MONITORING: Real-Time Optimization

Connected-Stories allows you to effortlessly analyze and optimize your strategy and creativities at any point in time during your campaign. We make data available to you the moment your campaign goes live, so that you can see which formats, stories and sequences are yielding the best results.

When your campaign goes online, the status in the Campaign page will be set on "Live", while once that campaign is over, the status will be changed  in "EXPIRED".

To learn more visit the Real-Time Optimization section.

NEXT STEP: Start planning your campaign's sequence >>