Objectives

The Ad Council collaborated with Yieldmo, the Humane Society of the United States, and Maddie's Fund(R) to conduct a series of experiments aimed at identifying the most effective strategy to increase Click-Through Rate (CTR) and optimize creative performance with minimal additional creative effort.

Yieldmo takes pleasure in bringing innovation to their customers. They use their proprietary advertising units and their curation capability to maximize outcomes and unlock value. And they do this in a really easy way.

Their latest tech, Dynamic Format Optimization (DFO), brings post-auction optimization to the media investment mix at scale. DFO transforms a brand’s existing creative assets into a suite of programmatic-friendly creative formats–Frictionless Formats–and uses AI to select and deliver the highest performing creative format in real-time. The assets remain DSP hosted and there is no additional effort required. Since the optimization happens after the impression is won, DFO does not reduce scale or affect spending; it simply performs better. Their goal with DFO is to use AI and creative tech to make advertising creative perform its best anywhere.

Strategy and Execution

In order to choose the right format in real-time and to drive results, Yieldmo needed a robust and advanced AI and machine learning infrastructure, as well high quality, privacy-safe input data that correlates with key performance indicators (KPIs). They also needed a suite of beautiful, impactful creative formats that were programmatic-friendly. To make activation seamless, they also needed a mechanism through which the core creative assets remain within the Ad Council's existing workflows, and have all customization happen on Yieldmo’s end during ad serving. This is where Dynamic Format Optimization connects the dots!

Utilizing their creative technology innovation, Dynamic Format Optimization, Yieldmo executed a Public Service Announcement (PSA) for the Ad Council using AI for post-auction creative optimization, combined with Smart Inventory Curation. To measure the results against the campaign benchmarks provided by the Ad Council, Yieldmo split the traffic into three groups:

1. A control group consisting of "Untouched" Yieldmo inventory for baseline measurement.
2. Yieldmo acted solely as an inventory source with no added value, while the advertiser’s demand-side platform (DSP) had no KPI goal and was only optimizing for "reach."
3. Yieldmo and the DSP worked together to drive performance, where Yieldmo used DFO and inventory curation targeted toward CTR, and the DSP had a CTR optimization target, aiming for roughly a 50% lift over the control.

Results

In our testing, we generated a significant KPI lift on our own, with results showing a staggering 130% increase over the control group, exceeding the Humane Society benchmark by 4x. However, it was more effective when used in concert with the DSP, which delivered a monumental 171% improvement over the control group, 5X the performance benchmark. DFO supercharges campaigns without modifying core creative or requiring additional work from ad ops, creative, or media teams.

We found that Yieldmo's Dynamic Format Optimization (DFO), in combination with Smart Inventory Curation, was additive and complementary to the typical DSP optimization buyers use. This approach was effective and delivered outstanding results for the Humane Society.

By exceeding these campaign goals, more site visitors could:

• Foster a pet for a friend, family member or neighbor.
• Donate pet food to a food pantry.
• Donate to cover the veterinary expenses of local pets.
• Help lost pets find their way home.
• Help a pet find a new home.

Media