In-House

CMP: What is a Creative Management Platform?

Creative Management Platforms

“Pull Quote”

Advertising is no longer static, it’s personalised, omnichannel, and optimisable across channels and multiple markets – and made in-house. Creative management platforms are essential for in-house teams

Creative Management Platforms (CMPs) defined

In its simplest form, a creative management platform, or CMP, is cloud-based software that allows marketing teams to create, distribute, and measure the performance of digital advertising.

A CMP is essentially a range of advertising technologies all rolled into one easy-to-use platform.

In many ways, CMPs act as a mini production agency for brands – reducing time, maximising ROI, and most importantly, enabling marketing teams to create more impactful and personalised advertising.

However, not all CMPs are the same. Premium CMPs such as our company Bannerflow, offer marketing teams many more complex functionalities. Not to mention the ability to work across multiple markets and channels of digital advertising.

Reason 1. Automation of creative production

CMPs dramatically alter the ways marketing teams work – for the better. The old inefficient ways of working, where it can take weeks to go from brief to finished campaign are over.

Brands that use a CMP can reduce production times from weeks to days thanks to a variety of powerful automation tools. The result is not just greater control over ads (and data) but improved efficiency thanks to the removal of repetitive processes, such as coding and the manual publishing of ads.

Using a CMP, marketing teams can have an idea in the morning, and a campaign live by the afternoon. Take CMC Markets for example, using the Bannerflow CMP, they were able to go live with a display campaign just one hour after the UK election result!

“Strive to maximise your efficiency. Whether it is by iterating internal processes, or using ad tech such as creative management platforms, all companies can improve efficiency.“

Jared Lekkas, Head of Product at Bannerflow

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Reason 2. Engagement through creativity

A creative management platform contains an ad creator that removes the pain (and hours) of advanced ad creation normally associated with ad production. (For example, individually coding every single HTML5 element, when looking to scale to different ad sizes and versions).

Indeed, Bannerflow’s Creative Studio has a user interface so intuitive that virtually anyone can use it to create complex HTML5, mobile, onsite, and social ads. Meaning designers can do what they do best with the time they save, which is design.

Using a CMP you can produce all the different variations of ad required for all your audiences. Not only that but you can use a range of different interactive features too, such as video, which according to internal Bannerflow data increases CTR by 18.4%.

Another bonus with using a CMP is that your ad creatives are hosted in-platform, in the cloud. This makes it possible to edit and refine live banners, in real-time, without the need to re-publish each time.

Reason 3. More collaborative and efficient workflows

Being cloud-based software, a creative management platform enables brands to work both globally and locally on projects – across locations. Collaboration between all team members takes place directly in-platform and all processes are completely transparent. No files are sent – and all stakeholders involved.

Meaning marketing teams can act quicker. Resulting in the death of long complicated email chains and all the mistakes associated with inefficient ways of working.

What’s more, because all brand and creative assets are accessible in one place, anyone working on a project sees everything, and can provide instant contextual feedback. For example, copywriters can edit copy directly in ads, and translators can do the same when localising campaigns for different markets – removing a typical production bottle-neck.

Reason 4. Easy optimisation of digital campaigns

Optimising your advertising is another area where a CMP provides value. Not only do all stakeholders have access to all live analytics data, but comparing campaigns, versions, formats, domains, devices and languages can easily be performed in-house with a CMP too.

A/B testing is hassle free as well. Indeed, any object within an ad made in a CMP is editable, while multiple versions can be quickly mass-produced in any new sizes thanks to smart scaling. Plus, with real-time publishing, new updates can go live in already published ads instantly.

Think a different CTA will improve your CTR? Give it a try. Then observe its impact in real-time using in-platform analytics. Using a CMP performance marketers and designers work in harmony to iterate and optimise campaigns. The result? More engaging ads, better ad performance, and improved ROI.

Reason 5. Personalisation via dynamic creative optimisation (DCO)

Today if you are not personalising your advertising then it is very likely your competitors already are.

DCO ad tech uses smart data feeds – powered by data – to produce messaging and ad creative tailored for different customers. Furthermore, DCO and CMPs are the ideal pairing of data and engaging creativity.

Indeed, without the use of a creative management platform, the time required to create each ad variant needed for DCO with different copy, CTAs, or unique interactive design elements would be impossible. You could do it without a CMP – but the likelihood is a reliance on basic templated designs. Or extremely long and inefficient production times with external help.

Instead, using a CMP means marketing teams benefit from full control over DCO campaigns and full flexibility. Plus, if you use a CMP  for your DCO creatives you can apply the same awesome versioning, rich media, and interactive capabilities of the very best HTML5 display campaigns – code-free.

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Reason 6. Brand consistency, across multiple campaigns and markets

Brand consistency and creating a unified experience for your audiences can be a challenge. Often mistakes or inconsistencies can occur – even for the biggest of brands when working across markets with local teams.

Using a CMP, is it far easier for marketing teams to achieve a unified brand experience across ad campaigns. For example, a premium CMP such as Bannerflow, offers the ability for the easy sign-off and control of every ad via a simple click. Meaning a Brand Manager based in New York can sign-off an entire worldwide campaign. Or even prevent a damaging error from happening in a campaign made by an editorial team based in another country.

Furthermore, an additional benefit of controlling campaign creatives in the same platform is that brands can create more effective omnichannel experience for customers. Thus, it is possible to react across cross channels, at a moment’s notice, with the same high-quality and consistent ad creative for display advertising, as it is your social ads.

Reason 7. Unbeatable flexibility for brands

What sets creative management platforms apart from other pieces of ad tech is the flexibility they provide marketing teams. For a start, a premium CMP is usually tailored specifically for a brand. This results in both a quicker onboarding process and the use of more advanced advertising features.

Nor are CMPs static pieces of ad tech. They have developed to become format agnostic and now handle nearly all digital ad formats from digital out-of-home, to social ads. What’s more, the way they integrate with other technologies is constantly evolving, from one click publishing to ad networks, to the use of CRM data, from services such as Salesforce.

For example, with a creative management platform such as Bannerflow you can now produce onsite ads that benefit from a combination of DCO and CRM technology. Meaning you can personalise your onsite advertising, to different customers, using a variety of engaging interactivity.

CMPs enable in-house marketing teams to do more

In an age of increasing competition between brands, being able to present the right ad, to the right viewer, at the right time is essential. Advertising is no longer static, it’s personalised, omnichannel, and optimisable across channels and multiple markets – and made in-house.

Creative management platforms are essential for in-house teams. And in an ever changing advertising landscape, they offer the features and functions for evermore efficient and sophisticated digital marketing.

About the author

Mark Haddon is Content Marketer at Banneflow

The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the contributor and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Marketing Procurement iQ or imply endorsement from the publisher