There are so many different types of advertising that it can start to feel overwhelming when you discover a new type or strategy. However, there is no need to be distressed when approaching a new form of marketing as a beginning. Dynamic content optimization can be an extremely useful way to advertise your products.

Other resources may tell you that DCO is easy to use, but there is quite a bit of a learning curve for this marketing strategy. But it is important to keep in mind that everyone starts somewhere with everything! Even experienced digital marketers may find themselves unaccustomed to DCO.

In this article, we will provide all of the information that you need to know about dynamic content optimization as a beginner. Let’s dive right in!

What is DCO?

DCO is an acronym that stands for dynamic content optimization. More specifically, DCO is a type of technology that allows for this optimization to target ads to specific consumers. This is usually done through graphical integration within an advertisement.

This is done by creating pieces of material that are dynamic in nature by planning ahead. In this case, dynamic is referring to the ability for the material to adjust to users in real-time. DCO uses machine learning and artificial intelligence in order to make digital or graphic advertisements that adjust to individual users based on pre-existing data.

Surprisingly, using DCO for advertisements is actually not very popular among digital marketers. This is a shame as DCO is a great way to make your prospective customers feel like they find something accessible in your advertisement.

What is DCO Advertising?

DCO advertising is the process of using dynamic content optimization in the form of an advertisement. This is a marketing strategy or type of advertising that caters more individually to users and shoppers that are seeing your advertisements in real-time. The end goal of using DCO for advertising is to have highly relatable content.

Using DCO for your online ads is a very good way to use data while advertising. DCO is both a term that applies to advertising and a form of advertising. The dynamic strategy that is used with DCO ads can be extremely productive for your business and digital marketing efforts.

Why Use DCO Advertising?

These ads are highly optimized and can be very successful campaigns. This is because customers want to feel catered to. People want to feel seen when they are interacting with the monolith that is the internet.

Have you ever seen an advertisement on the side of a website that completely did not apply to you? This can be frustrating or even a little bit funny. If you are in your mid-30s and are being shown advertisements on retirement homes, there is no way that you will click on that ad. At most, you might even take a screenshot of the ad and send it to your friends as a joke.

These advertisements can fall on deaf ears and be a waste of an advertising budget.

What Does DCO Take into Consideration?

DCO marketing will take in many data points in order to determine who is viewing the ad and what context they are viewing the ad in. Here is a list of some of the data points that DCO will look for when adjusting and optimizing to a specific person:

• Geographic location
• Weather in geographic location
• Lifestyle
• Age
• Gender
• Income bracket
• Prior interactions

As well, DCO optimizes based on other considerations to try to boost conversion rates based on the web page that the advertisement is on including:

• Home page purpose
• Keywords
• Keyword search

In addition, DCO will take into consideration your own website and the potential places that your new interested customer should visit on your website including:

• Best product page
• Home page
• Landing page
• Relevant articles

So now that you know all of the different pieces of data and information that DCO processes when trying to convert advertisement viewers into loyal customers, let’s explore some more specific examples of DCO ads.

What Does a DCO Ad Look Like in Practice?

You may still be struggling with wrapping your head around what DCO looks like organically on the internet. Don’t beat yourself up about this! Remember, if you have been targeted by an ad that has DCO enabled, you wouldn’t know it.

That is because DCO changes the ads that you are shown in real-time. Most people that interact with DCO ads are completely unaware that they have come across this highly specialized type of online advertisement.

Let’s go over an example of a DCO ad in practice:

This example DCO ad is a travel agent service that would like to reel in new clients to help people travel to their dream destinations. However, it would be difficult to market this service to people through digital advertisements based on keywords because there are so many destinations that someone could go to.

People who are searching for destinations such as Orlando, Florida, may not be trying to travel there. They may actually be living in Orlando, Florida. You may have noticed this happen to you in advertisements because these digital ads are targeting mentions of a location.

A DCO ad can use its dynamic capabilities in order to completely avoid this conundrum. As well, it can go even further to locate good options for travel destinations that could provide the potential customer a new and unique experience.

For example, imagine you are a user on your favorite website, and you live in sunny Orlando, Florida. A non-DCO ad would be likely to advertise your own city as a possible destination. However, a DCO advertisement could recommend alternative destinations such as New York City or even Alaska to give you a change of pace from what you’re used to.

How to Start Using DCO for Your Ads

Now that you know what DCO ads do and how they work, let’s discuss how you can start using DCO advertisements for your own digital marketing.

First and foremost, you will need to set up personas for the various buyers that could be purchasing your products. These can be slightly vague because they are more for you than they are for the AI. Ask yourself the following questions:

What are this person’s goals?

What are this person’s problems?

How can our products help them reach their goals and solve their problems?

This stage is where your existing market research will really help you. If you do not have this information about your target market, you will likely struggle with this step. However, do not let this discourage you. The answers to these questions are important for you to know for your marketing efforts in general!

Next, once you understand these potential buyer personas and have completed them, you can start to collaborate with a team to start using a DCO platform, also known as a creative management platform. Another option is that there are templates that allow you to sidestep some of the creative process, but these are more coding heavy options.

The next step is that you will need to work to make a decision tree in order to work out the possible options that someone interacting with your DCO ad can fall into. These are category buckets that align with the information that these dynamic ads can collect about your customers. You can think of this decision tree as a choose your own adventure. Think “if this, then” when making this decision tree.

Finally, you will use your new creative management platform in order to upload your variations to your online advertisement. This should be pretty simple depending on the platform that you choose. Remember that as a beginner, it is to be expected that you may need help with things! If you need help setting this portion up, do not be ashamed. It is to be expected.

Once you have completed these steps, you should try to test your new DCO ad and have other users test them out to see how they are working when they are live!

Conclusion and Takeaway

By using DCO ads, you will be pleasing your ad viewers by improving their overall experience with your ads. As we mentioned before, people love to see ads that are relevant to them, and irrelevant ads are easily ignored. Especially in the advertising-heavy world that we live in, many people tune out ads that disinterest them.

We hope that we have answered the pressing question of what dynamic content optimization for you in a way is that is easy to understand as a beginner! By using DCO ads, you will improve your chances of converting ad viewers to finalized sales. You will also be taking advantage of a high-tech alternative to advertising that many advertisers do not yet utilize.

We encourage you to start to take advantage of DCO ads in order to convert viewers to sales in a meaningful way.