Dynamic ads are powerful tools that not only catch the eye of consumers, but also personalize content that fosters unparalleled levels of engagement and conversion. Understanding dynamic ads and how to harness their potential can significantly enhance your marketing efforts. In this article, we’ll explore the intricacies of dynamic ads, including functionality, examples, and practical strategies for using them as part of your marketing strategy. Whether you’re a seasoned marketer or just dipping your toes into the world of digital advertising, this guide will help you maximize the impact of your dynamic ads.
What Are Dynamic Ads?
Dynamic ads, also known as dynamic banners or dynamic creatives, adjust their content, such as imagery or call-to-action, based on a user’s behavior. A dynamic ad can use a person’s browsing history, geolocation, and demographics to create a personalized experience, ensuring they see the most relevant and compelling content.
By delivering hyper-targeted messages to consumers, dynamic ads significantly increase the likelihood of capturing their attention and prompting action. Moreover, their adaptability allows you to stay agile in the face of rapidly evolving consumer trends and preferences.
How do dynamic ads differ from static ads?
Static ads are traditional display advertisements that feature fixed content, typically consisting of images, text, and graphics. While static ads are easy to create and deploy, they lack the personalization and relevance of dynamic ads. Dynamic ads provide greater flexibility and scalability, enabling advertisers to adapt their messaging in real time to reflect changing market dynamics and consumer behaviors.
Generally speaking, static ads may be suitable for broad brand awareness campaigns, but dynamic ads offer a more personalized and effective approach to driving meaningful results in a competitive digital landscape.
What are the Different Types of Dynamic Ads?
Dynamic ads come in various forms, each tailored to meet specific advertising goals and platforms. We’ll cover the most common types: search, display, Facebook, and LinkedIn dynamic ads.
Dynamic search ads
Dynamic search ads (DSAs) are a type of ad campaign offered by platforms like Google Ads that automatically generate ad headlines and landing pages based on the content of a website. Unlike traditional keyword-targeted search ads, which require advertisers to select specific keywords to trigger their ads, DSA campaigns use Google’s organic web crawling technology to index a website's content and match it to relevant search queries.
DSAs are particularly useful for websites with constantly changing inventory or a large number of products/services, as they ensure ads remain up-to-date and relevant without the need for constant manual adjustments. All you have to do is provide a consistent creative description across all ads, and Google will generate the headline and landing page based on the search query. Additionally, DSAs can complement existing search campaigns by filling gaps in keyword coverage and capturing long-tail searches.
Dynamic display ads
Dynamic display ads are banner advertisements on websites and mobile apps that adapt their content according to user behavior. These ads incorporate elements such as product recommendations, pricing information, and promotional messages based on the user’s past interactions, demographics, and interests.
One of the key advantages of dynamic display ads is their ability to deliver highly relevant and personalized content at scale, without the need for manual intervention. This automation allows you to efficiently reach your target audience with relevant messages, resulting in improved click-through rates, conversion rates, and overall campaign performance.
Facebook dynamic ads
With Facebook dynamic ads, you can effortlessly showcase your complete product range across Facebook, Instagram, and Audience Network, eliminating the need to create countless individual ads. Dynamic ads ensure precise product-to-audience alignment by harnessing intent signals displayed by customers on websites and apps.
LinkedIn dynamic ads
Dynamic ads on LinkedIn come in three formats: follower ads, spotlight ads, and jobs ads. Follower ads allow you to expand your audience, acquire more followers for your LinkedIn or Showcase Page, and grow your influence when users see and engage with the organic content you share on LinkedIn. Spotlight ads focus on driving traffic to your website or landing page by featuring your product, service, event, newsletter, and more with a clear objective for your target audience. Lastly, job ads allow you to personalize ads to top talent, encouraging relevant candidates to apply with your company.
What Are the Benefits of Using Dynamic Ads?
Dynamic ads offer marketers a powerful toolset for delivering relevant, personalized, and engaging content to their target audience. In fact, dynamic ads drive a 2x higher click-through rate (CTR) and 50% lower cost-per-acquisition (CPA) than static ads. How is this so? For starters, dynamic ads can adapt and customize ad content in real time based on various factors such as user behavior, demographics, and interests. This ensures your consumers see the most relevant, up-to-date content wherever they are, increasing the likelihood of capturing their attention and driving conversion.
Dynamic ads take it a step further since they leverage data to deliver highly personalized messaging to individual consumers. By analyzing data points such as browsing history, purchase behavior, and demographic information, dynamic ads can tailor content to match specific preferences. Another advantage of using dynamic ads is that they automatically display personalized product recommendations based on user interactions and preferences. By showcasing relevant products that align with the consumer’s interests and past purchases, dynamic ads foster a stronger connection with your target audience and enhance the overall marketing experience.
Additionally, dynamic ads streamline the advertising process by operating in a hands-free manner. With automation handling the heavy lifting, there’s no need for additional resources or manual intervention, allowing marketers to focus on other strategic initiatives. This seamless integration of automation not only saves time and effort but also ensures consistency and accuracy in ad delivery across various platforms and channels.
Remarket to previous visitors with dynamic retargeting ads
Dynamic retargeting ads deliver personalized ads to users who have previously interacted with your website or mobile app. For instance, if a user views a particular product on your website but doesn't complete their purchase, or abandon their shopping cart without completing the order, dynamic retargeting ads can display that exact product or similar ones in ad creative. This allows you to retarget and reconnect with consumers via personalized ads. Ultimately, retargeting increases brand recall, drives conversions, and boosts your advertising ROI.
Attract new customers with dynamic prospecting ads
Unlike retargeting ads that focus on engaging with existing website or app users, dynamic prospecting ads are designed to reach out to potential consumers who have not yet interacted with your brand. By using AI and machine learning technologies to analyze consumer behavior, demographics, and interests, these ads identify consumers who are likely to be interested in your products or services and deliver tailored and highly relevant content.
One key advantage of dynamic prospecting ads is the ability to acquire new prospects and adapt and optimize ad content in real time based on consumer interactions and preferences, maximizing relevance and engagement. Google’s Smart Shopping and Performance Max campaigns are examples of dynamic prospecting ads.
4 Steps to Create Dynamic Product Ads
Dynamic product ads are dynamic ads supported by a product data feed. A product data feed, or simply product feed, provides images and other product information to the dynamic ad campaign to display the relevant products to each target audience.
Dynamic product ads are available on various advertising platforms, including Google Ads, Meta Ads, and AdRoll. While the formats of dynamic product ads vary on different platforms, their setup process generally follows these four steps.
1. Set up an ad tracking pixel on your website
The first step to creating a dynamic product ad is to make sure that your ad tracking pixel is properly installed on your website. An ad tracking pixel is a JavaScript code snippet placed in the header of your website that connects your website to an ad platform. The pixel tracks visitor behavior on your site, such as views on any product pages, adding items to the shopping cart, or filling out a form.
Pro Tip: Advertising platforms like AdRoll usually offer multiple ways to set up the tracking pixel. In most cases, marketers don’t need to mess with the actual JavaScript code themselves.
2. Preparing your product feed for the ad platform
Now that your tracking pixel is set up, the next step is to connect your product feed to your ad platform. Your product feed is essentially a data file that encompasses details about every item featured on your website. Dynamic ads use the content extracted from your product feed file, ensuring the appropriate information is showcased when your ad appears.
The method for connecting a product feed varies by platform. In addition to native integration, some advertising platforms also support third-party product feed management tools.
Once your product feed has been connected, make sure it’s in the correct format and is accurate. Content appears in the ad exactly as it appears in the feed, so always make sure that information is up to date (e.g., products out of stock, price, sale price if available, product information as displayed on the product page, etc.) so it can be reflected properly.
Pro Tip: eCommerce platforms, such as Shopify and wooCommerce, can integrate easily with advertising platforms through third-party apps on their marketplaces. For example, once you install the AdRoll app and connect to your store, we automatically set up your tracking pixel and connect your product feed. For more information, visit our eCommerce marketing page.
3. Design your ad creative with a dynamic ad template
Templates are an efficient way to create personalized and high-performing dynamic ads across various channels. Dynamic ad templates provided by ad platforms make it easy to create dynamic product ads for different advertising media and campaign needs.
These templates cover a wide array of ad formats, including carousel ads, single-image ads, and video ads. You can choose the format that best aligns with your business goals and content preferences. With these templates, it’s easy to create visually stunning ads that capture the attention of your target audience.
4. Define your target audience and ad budget
Understanding the demographics, interests, and behaviors of your audience is essential. This involves analyzing age, gender, location, and online activities to create detailed customer personas. With dynamic ads, which automatically adjust content based on user interactions, you can target precise audiences and reach individuals with personalized messaging.
Once the audience is defined, you’ll need to allocate an ad budget considering factors such as audience size, the market's competitiveness, and desired reach and frequency. A dynamic ad campaign allows for flexibility in budget allocation, as it can optimize spending based on real-time performance data to ensure maximum impact and return on investment.
Dynamic Ad Examples
Of course, it’s hard to visualize dynamic ad campaigns without actually seeing what the ads look like. Take a look at the work we did with M.A.C. Cosmetics for their Cyber Weekend sale. We incorporated a countdown timer and animated promo messaging alongside dynamic product content, resulting in a bold and engaging set of ads.
Another example is our work with Montblanc, where a “full-bleed” background video highlights the craftsmanship of the product and pairs it with a minimal single-product layout for this brand awareness campaign. The resulting look and feel are clean and distinct to the Montblanc brand.
Check out our gallery of dynamic ad examples for more inspiration across different industries.
Your Campaign’s Dynamic Duo
With AdRoll, you’ll get access to our in-house dynamic ad team, who can provide high-impact ads that are on-brand and on-time. Learn more about AdRoll’s dynamic ad feature today.