TechBytes with Boaz Cohen, CPO, Clinch

Boaz Cohen
CPO, Clinch

Advertisers are increasingly looking to deliver exceptional performance and grow their return on ad spend using data-driven personalized messages with real time optimization. On the other hand, publishers rely on premium CPMs to communicate with customers and prospects on a very personalized, 1-to-1 level. Clinch, the master at cracking the ‘The Code of Personal Creative DNA’ in programmatic advertising, offers high-quality dynamic video making and advertising platform to advertisers, publishers and agencies. To understand how the programmatic company built its Ad-Serving and Optimization engine for cross-channel video optimization, we spoke to Boaz Cohen, CPO, Clinch.

MTS: How does Clinch combine brand, product and consumer data to create unified personalized experiences?
Boaz Cohen: There is an element of art and science in creating a unified personalized video experience. First Clinch’s creative team will work hand-in-hand with the brand’s creative team to understand the brand’s creative elements and the data elements that drive the brand’s consumer engagement. This may include segmentation, weather, location and other 1^st party and 3^rd party data points. Then Clinch’s creative team will create multiple creative templates that fit the brand’s requirements and incorporate each of the data elements. Once we achieve a joint agreement on brand and data usage, Clinch’s platform will combine the templates along with data and product feeds to automatically generate a personalized and unified creative experience. For example, let’s take the brand Nespresso. The brand may want to use their CRM data to only market pod refills to consumers they know own a machine. Clinch will create an ad that is based on the national TV ad, with personalized elements, such as the type of pods the consumer usually buy based on the CRM data or pods that fit their type of espresso machine.

MTS: How do you see cloud-based video adtech platforms evolving with new programmatic platforms on mobile, desktop, connected TV and OTT?
Boaz: Adtech platforms when combined with programmatic can deliver services at scale. Clinch has taken the power of programmatic and enabled brands to achieve a new level of creativity that wasn’t possible before. While today most companies use programmatic media buying to deliver better targeting (the “right person”), Clinch brings the right message into the equation ( “the right message to the right person at the right time”).

For example, the usage of Addressable TV and OTT has been growing for the past couple of years – marketers use Addressable TV and OTT to better target TV viewers, however, they have been missing out on a key element, which is personalizing the TV ad to the viewer, to achieve higher ROI.

MTS: What is the future of in-banner videos in a fully-programmatic landscape?
Boaz: As long as in-banner video remains much cheaper than pre-roll video inventory, in-banner video is here to stay. That being said, media buyers should apply all the standard fraud and viewability metrics and ROI measurements to make sure they are derieving value out of using in-banner videos. Clinch can actually deliver the right message to the right person at the right time, by producing tailored HTML5 in-banner video creatives at scale, to drive branding, sales, and loyalty. This video approach led to an approximately 25% increase in sales.

MTS:  What are the core components of the proprietary decision, recommendation and rendering engines used in VIDEOAI TM technology?
Boaz: Clinch has built a fully automated ad production and distribution engine which requires zero technical integration from the media buyer platform. Clinch takes assets, such as product feeds (price/item), product images, and brand videos, and turns them into hundreds and thousands of video ad versions to match each individual customer.

During the campaign, Clinch’s Ad-Serving and Optimization engine works hand-in-hand with the media buyer platform to match each user with the right message at any touch point in their user journey, across any device or digital channel they’re on – whether it’s on their mobile phone, desktop, Facebook or TV/OTT. With personalization and optimization Clinch’s VideoAI TM technology drives branding, sales, and loyalty.

MTS:  How does Clinch analyze infinite performance metrics and behavioral data to apply predictive and Machine learning intelligence to ad optimization?
Boaz: Using machine learning and data points such as video ad completion rates, post-exposure website visitation, foot traffic, and others, Clinch can not only see which creative version performs best but also which creative version performs best for each target segment of the brand. Clinch personalizes creative elements such as promotions and messaging, and conducts A/B testing of video creatives to uncover the highest performing messaging and offering for each target segment of the brand. For example, Clinch can uncover that one segment prefers a “buy 1 get 1” offer, while another segment prefers a “40% off” one.

MTS: Thanks for chatting with us, Boaz.
Stay tuned for more insights on marketing technologies. To participate in our Tech Bytes program, email us at news@martechseries-67ee47.ingress-bonde.easywp.com