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Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO)

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⚠️ This article refers to using DCO in the old campaign creation UI - if you are looking to set up DCO ads in Workspaces, please refer to this article. Keep in mind old Automated Ads DO NOT work with DCO, if you are looking to automate DCO ads please use Workspaces instead.

Dynamic Creative leverages Facebook's creative optimization in regular (non-dynamic) campaigns, automatically experimenting with different ad creative variations and delivering the best combination to your audience.

The feature aims to find the optimal ad creative combination per impression by gathering data on how different combinations of your ad's image, title, description, and other assets perform across audiences. Dynamic Creative used to be known as Dynamic Creative Optimization, or DCO.

Dynamic Creative automatically builds and displays the best creative for groups of people in your broader target audience, making it easier to efficiently explore numerous creative combinations and audiences. If you’re unsure what creative combinations work best for the people in your target audiences, Dynamic Creative can help you by automating the creative testing workflow and applying the results to improve performance.

See also Language Optimization – a form of Dynamic Creative that lets you specify language variations of your creative.

See also Placement Asset Customization – a way to to customize the image or video asset for each placement within one ad.

Dynamic Creative Optimization in Smartly.io

To add a Dynamic Creative in a regular campaign, select Asset Customization as the Type in the Ad Creatives section and then toggle Dynamic Creative and click on optimize creative variations

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Dynamic Creative currently supports single image and video as media formats. You can include both images and videos in one Dynamic Creative, but in this case assets cannot be organized in groups.

You can add multiple assets to a Dynamic Creative. The creative must contain at least one of each of the following assets:

  • Link URL
  • Title
  • Message
  • Media Assets 
  • Description
  • Call-to-action button

 

Dynamic Creative is a dynamic ad format. Only one ad is created for each creative you define, but the creative will look different for every person seeing it. Social engagement for the Dynamic Creative ad will be aggregated under each piece of primary media (image, video, or other). For example, image 1 will add up engagements from all Dynamic Creative ads that use image 1. This also helps Facebook's delivery optimization, as it will have more data to base its decisions on.

Grouping assets

Sometimes, certain assets are designed to be used together in a single ad, such as a body-title-description combination. To create these combinations, add group labels and assign the assets to the same group. This way you can specify which assets must appear together in a single ad.

Multiple link URLs can only be specified if they belong to separate groups. This is because having multiple links is mostly useful for customizing the language of the landing page. You can simply create a group label for each link and assign each link to a group.

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Audience targeting

Each Dynamic Creative must have a dedicated Audience assigned to it. Make sure that you only assign one audience to each of your Dynamic Creatives, and that you do not assign the same audience to two different Dynamic Creatives.

Conversely, each Dynamic Creative ad set can only contain the Dynamic Creative, and nothing else. You also cannot later add more creatives to an ad set containing a Dynamic Creative.

Creative specifications

Specifications updated on 15 February 2018. You can see the latest limitations from Facebook ads help center and Facebook's developer documentation.

A Dynamic Creative can contain a maximum of 29 assets per creative. For example, you can have 10 different images, 5 bodies, 5 titles, 5 descriptions, 1 link URL and 3 Call-To-Action buttons within one Dynamic Creative. In addition, the following limitations and guidelines apply:

  • Maximum total number of assets: 29
  • Maximum number of links: 1
    • You can add more links if you define each link in a different group. See Grouping assets for more information.
  • Maximum number of images and videos: 10
  • Maximum for other asset types (title, body, and so on): 5 per type
  • Maximum Call-To-Actions: 5
    • Not all Call-To-Actions are supported at this point
  • Title/description/body text maximum length: 255 characters
  • Recommended image size: 1,200 x 628 pixels
  • Recommended image aspect ratio: 1.9:1
  • If Instagram placement is included:
    • consider using square images for better performance
    • only square videos or landscape videos are allowed (no vertical videos)
  • Each Dynamic Creative must have a separate, dedicated audience
  • The ad set can only contain one Dynamic Creative and nothing else

Best practices

  • Create messages that have enough meaningful differences. For example, consider distinguishing messages by using a question format, funny content, or call-to-action type of sentences.
  • Use different types of images. Use colors, different product images, and product images showing the usage of the product.
  • Use broad targeting with dynamic creative optimization.
  • If Instagram placement is included, consider using square images for better performance.

Current limitations

DCO is a new feature and many details are subject to change. These are the limitations specific to Smartly.io – we are working on improving the product constantly.

Supported formats for Dynamic Creative include:

  • Ad type:
    • Link Ad with a single image/video
  • Campaign objectives:
    • Link clicks
    • Conversions (Web and App)
    • App Installs
  • Placements:
    • Desktop feed
    • Mobile feed
    • Instagram Stream (Instagram Stories do not support Dynamic Creative yet)
    • Audience Network
  • Ad set with dynamic creative can only have one ad

When using both images and videos in the same Dynamic Creative it is not possible to organize assets in groups.

Dynamic Creative does not currently support:

  • GIF creatives
  • Carousel Ads

Troubleshooting

Multiple Link URLs Without Group Rules - Multiple link URLs has to be used with group rules. (Invalid parameter)

If you have multiple link URLs in a Dynamic Creative, they need to be assigned into different groups. To remove the error, create group labels and assign a group label for each link URL. You don't need to group the other assets in the creative.

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