Dynamic asset selection for in-stream video creatives

Use dynamic asset selection to quickly traffic complex video campaigns that include multiple assets. Dynamic asset selection lets you use rules to associate multiple assets with targeting criteria in a single in-stream video creative. The targeting criteria you set inside the creative is used to serve the right asset to users. When you’re ready to pull reports on these creatives, you can see the performance for the creative overall as well as broken out by each asset.

Let’s say you’re advertising a T-shirt and have five video assets with the same creative message, but each video is in a different language. You’d need to traffic five in-stream video creatives, assign those creatives to five ads with targeting criteria on each ad, and assign those five ads to a placement. Reporting data would be fragmented across five different creatives. With dynamic asset selection, you can set up one in-stream video creative that contains five assets and assign it to one ad and one placement. Each asset would have its own targeting that determines when it serves. You can see the performance for the overall creative message in a single creative.

The steps for adding an in-stream creative that uses dynamic selection are largely the same as trafficking a regular in-stream video creative.

Step 1: Create an in-stream video creative

Follow the standard steps to create an in-stream video creative:

1. Open your campaign or advertiser.
2. Click New > In-stream video.
3. Name your creative in the Creative name field. Or leave it blank, and Campaign Manager 360 will name your creative based on the video file you upload.
4. Complete any of the optional Identification fields for the creative.

Step 2: Enable dynamic asset selection

You’ll create a rule for each of your assets, and then prioritize them based on what targeting criteria is most important to your campaign. You can create as many rules as you want.

Here’s an example of a completed set of rules:

1. Under Creative assets, select the option to Enable dynamic asset selection. You’ll now see the table where you’ll assign targeting templates and assets to rules.
2. Click Add rule. Now you’ll fill in the details of this rule:
   1. Give your rule a name. The name is used to help you identify the rule and doesn’t impact serving.
   2. Add a targeting template or create a new one to define the intended audience for each asset. Targeting templates are reusable sets of targeting criteria that are stored in your advertiser for use across campaigns. Learn more about targeting templates.
   3. Add an asset.
3. Repeat step 2 until all of your assets are added to the creative.
4. Add an asset to the default rule. The default rule serves when none of the targeting criteria in your other rules matches a user. We recommend adding an asset you’d be comfortable showing to any user.
5. Prioritize your rules. Rule matching is determined by the order of the rules in the Rules table going from top to bottom. Campaign Manager 360 attempts to match the rule at the top of the table first. If that rule doesn’t match, the next rule is tested, and so on. If no rules match, the default rule is used. Put your most specific rule at the top of the table and your broadest rule at the bottom.
6. Click Save. Campaign Manager 360 can begin processing all of your assets once you save the creative.

Step 3: Finish setting up the creative

The steps for setting up the rest of your creative are the same as a regular in-stream video creative. Some steps you’ll complete for each individual asset, and others apply to the entire creative:

• For each asset: Set up serving files and companions for each asset you added to the creative.
• For the entire creative: Set third-party URLs, creative fields, and other video settings.

When you preview an in-stream creative with dynamic asset selection, you can choose each rule in the creative and test that the correct asset renders.

Step 4: Trafficking the creative

There’s no difference in assigning in-stream video creatives with dynamic asset selection to standard ads. Since all of the targeting criteria you’d normally put in the ad are part of the creative, we don’t recommend that you set additional ad-level targeting.

Reporting for dynamic asset selection

You can report on the individual assets in your in-stream video creative by including the following dimensions in your reports:

• Asset
• Asset ID
• Asset category

Reports that don’t include these dimensions will show data based on the aggregate performance of all of the assets in your creative.