Create a Campaign
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: Plan, Create, Deliver, Live.
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.
After uploading your creative assets, you can begin to build your content sequences. Connected-Stories offers a variety of ready-to-use widgets to help you 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.