Megan Sullivan-Jenks, Director of Marketing, Choozle: We sometimes like to kick these off by asking the most important questions first. If you could only have one tech accessory for the rest of your life, what would it be and why?
Mike Gerpe, Head of Business Development, Shotzr: A Camera! Anyone really, but maybe something easy to carry like a SonyRx100 or a FujiX100.
MSJ: Before we dig into digital advertising creative, can you explain what Shotzr does?
MG: Shotzr streamlines the ad creative process and drastically improves ad performance by delivering targeted imagery for personalized campaigns, at scale.
MSJ: From your point of view, how important are creative assets to the success of a digital advertising campaign?
MG: We believe that creative assets are the most important ingredient when creating a digital campaign. Content with relevant images receives 94% more views than content without relevant images. So, it’s vital for marketers to select relevant imagery that will resonate with their audience and to utilize personalized ad creative in order to forge a meaningful connection with consumers.
MSJ: What are some common missteps that you see with digital advertising creative?
MG: One common misstep we see is underestimating the importance of creative. Marketers spend a good amount of time researching their ideal customer personas and defining parameters to target that audience, but then creative can often be left as an afterthought.
Another misstep is not utilizing A/B split testing. Get comfortable experimenting. Programmatic and Social platforms make it very easy and affordable to test multiple creative sets and assess performance. Most clients have a variety of ad sets running at the same time and don’t always customize creative to fit each one. We live by “ABO” – always be optimizing!
MSJ: How much does Shotzr take into account things like target audience and other data points when creating display ads?
MG: It’s our number one focus. We built our platform to ingest both audience interests and location data in order to generate relevant imagery from our library for our clients.
For Example, if Utah Tourism wanted to run a few campaigns to get people interested in visiting Moab, their ad set would include keywords like “adventure, hiking, climbing, mountain biking, rafting, etc” and their target location would be Moab. Our platform would parse this data to source and deliver imagery matching those parameters.
We also have a full-service offering, so if clients want us to curate the photos on their behalf vs. leveraging our platform’s AI recommendations, we can work with them for no extra charge.
MSJ: Do you think personalization and localization can make an impact on the results of the overall campaign?
MG: We do! We believe that personalization will always have a positive impact on your campaign results and using localization has an even larger impact.
But, don’t just take our word for it, three of the largest social case studies have all proven that creative + localization drives the performance for marketers.
Based on our tests, using personalized imagery with a focus on location:
• Increases CTRs up to 60%, on average
• Decreases CPCs by 30%, on average
• Achieves up to 100% ROAS
MSJ: What is the value that marketers gain from serving compelling/engaging creative assets?
MG: Using personalized and localized ad creative enables marketers to connect with their target audience and having that personalized touch creates a more impactful user experience. Which ultimately drives an increase in engagement, click through rates, sales metrics, and brand loyalty.
MSJ: What makes Shotzr so effective?
MG: Until now, marketers have either paid a premium price (per photo) for generic stock photos or paid an agency or photographer for customized creative. All of which can be costly and time-consuming. Shotzr has combined a world-class stock photo library, our own global network of creators, and programmatic technology to completely streamline the process. Using Shotzr allows our clients to save time, unlock targeting capabilities, and boost their overall ad performance.
Mike is a partnership focused business leader with a wide array of experience in strategy, management, customer success, account growth, sales, and product development. In the last few years, he has seen success at two startups, most noticeably at DataLogix which was acquired by Oracle in 2014. Mike is currently the head of business development and partnerships at Shotzr where he is focused on driving platform adoption to help marketers solve the challenges of personalized local creative.
