Creatives are a result of determined efforts and loads of patience. It can take hours at a stretch just to come up with one layer of it at times. And though it may drive companies to the end of their wits designing creatives, testing these programmatic display creatives is absolutely worth going the extra mile for.
In order to get the most out of your creatives, you need to optimise them consistently, analyse the impact they have, their overall performance, and the insight it eventually generates; all this needs consideration. Having this data by your side enables you to put out tailored content in the form of creatives that have a higher resonance value with your audiences.
Due diligence for QA of creatives
There are two ways of testing your creatives before they are posted out to please your audiences. These approaches are dependent on the objective you intend to meet through your campaign and the campaign’s length.
1. Creative performance testing
This is the first approach to check your creative’s performance. This is testing a lot of creatives at once. Mainly, the purpose of creative testing is to gather insights. Generally, this is done for shorter campaign periods – something short of two months or even lesser – but with a relatively larger budget. This method helps you get quick but not one hundred per cent accurate results. The uncertainty is about how the post performed and for what reasons it performed or did not perform.
The second way to go about creative testing is the good ol’ A/B testing. This is recommended for campaigns of longer durations. It ideally shows you what is really working out for your posts and what is not working all that well. Therefore, the size of the budget is immaterial in this method.
2. Creative optimisation
Creative optimisation has one standard technique which is more of a one-size approach that ends up fitting the various needs. It involves the analysis of creative performances across the account. This is thereby followed by optimising and selecting the top-performing creatives and eliminating the ones that did not do well. Usually, a more granular way of going about this is where the creative analysis and optimisation are carried out at the placement level.
Eg. One sets up a test of five differently made creatives for one client account – in which one would be generic, and the others would be specific, with a distinct focus.
What are you testing really?
The main aspects you need to be looking at while testing creatives are aesthetics and the messaging.
When it comes to aesthetic consideration, you could be looking into what works better – animated versus static, various parameters on the basis of backgrounds, text colours, and even logo placement.
In terms of messaging, you need to drive your focus towards the Call To Action or CTA, as this turns out to be a major issue far too often. Moreover, one needs to remember that CTA has a huge impact.
To wrap it all up, it is essential to know how your creatives perform in the long run. Improvisation is a never-ending process. Cashing on it will only benefit your brand and yield fruits to the labours you put in.
