Ad-Lib.io was conceived to unlock creative personalisation for brands’ campaigns. They already had the ad server and media platforms, but lacked the tools and expertise to use dynamic technology to run relevant, optimised creative messaging.

Our platform was originally structured around this need: users would provide the campaign details, we would create the templates, build the creative, and the platform let clients review, approve and report on the dynamic creative variants for their campaigns.

Over time, we noticed a couple of things:

1. Large brands require custom, complex templates in order to faithfully reflect their expensive and strictly governed brand assets
2. Dynamic technology can be used for more than just campaign-level DCO. These templates - whose code complexity can rival that of a fully functional website - can be used to unlock process efficiency across a diverse range of use cases, including transcreation, multi-channel activations, and multi-campaign execution.

These insights made us rethink how dynamic creative technology can be used - and re-used - to deliver ongoing value to our clients, while maintaining the key value propositions we’ve always held dear:

1. Be additive: let people continue to use the tools and technology they already enjoy
2. Be marketer-focused: a user of Ad-Lib.io needs no design, coding or media buying skills to be able to create and deploy relevant ads for all their campaigns
3. Be future proof: Ad-Lib.io is still not (and will never be) an ad server, which means our solutions are protected against privacy and regulatory changes
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Welcome to the New Ad-Lib.io Creative Management Platform

Our latest platform release restructures Ad-Lib.io to create a clearer distinction between creative “fix & flex” template production and the campaigns that are built using these templates. 

We group these templates into thematically-related cross-format and cross-channel creative concepts. These concepts are surfaced to our users in a new gallery which serves as the front door to the platform. Each concept contains annotated storyboards that communicate in detail how the templates behave, both in terms of ‘fix’ elements (‘fixed’ in place to ensure brand governance and best practice), and ‘flex’ elements, which can be customised to build relevant creative variants. 

Maximising the reusability of these concepts requires a lot of skill, attention to detail, and, crucially, comprehensiveness of information provided at the briefing stage. That’s why this release includes a brand new concept briefing experience, which introduces automation, recommendations, and DAM connectivity, to make the experience as quick and easy as possible for clients, while ensuring we are getting all the information and assets needed to produce high quality, highly resilient customised creative concepts that can be used time and time again. Many of our clients already have a broad and versatile collection of existing creative concepts, and now it’s even easier for them to activate these across their campaigns.
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Tying Creative Directly to Campaigns

Once a user has selected an approved creative concept, they need to build a campaign, and this release streamlines that process enormously. A quick and simple form launches the user straight into our campaigns infrastructure, allowing users to connect their media campaigns with their creative templates, and use simple tools to build customised creative variants that can be pushed straight into the media platforms.
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More Good Stuff Now, and Coming Soon

Our reporting dashboard has also had a facelift, making it easier to understand creative performance data across campaigns, concepts and markets. 

In subsequent releases we will be adding more creative acceptability, governance and best-practice monitoring to the concept storyboard interface, ensuring that creative approval is a data-driven decision. This will be complemented by more features that bring enhanced scalability, automation and security to the Ad-Lib.io platform. Stay tuned for regular updates!