
Delivering Efficient, Engaging Advertising with Social Dynamic Ads with SEGA
SEGA, a renowned name in the gaming industry, partnered with Bannerflow to revolutionize their advertising efforts. As one of the world's most iconic video game publishers, SEGA sought a solution to streamline their creative processes and scale their advertising across multiple markets effectively. With challenges ranging from handling diverse formats and sizes to the need for language localization, Bannerflow emerged as the ideal platform.
The collaboration began with a shared vision of innovation and efficiency. SEGA's creative and marketing teams have since integrated Bannerflow into their workflow, leveraging its capabilities to produce high-quality ads quickly and cost-effectively. We spoke with Noud Tempelaere, Matt Whittles, and Anna Juvanteny, to explore the partnership's impact and how it has enabled SEGA to meet the demands of an ever-changing digital landscape.
Can you briefly describe how the collaboration between SEGA and Bannerflow began? What challenges or opportunities motivated you to partner with Bannerflow?
Noud: We were looking for a way to offer an additional service to all our studios and brand teams with a relatively small effort. Bannerflow was the ideal tool to create a variety of banners easily, especially since we needed to handle different sizes, formats, and languages. The platform's language versioning and lack of file size constraints stood out, allowing us to focus on creativity rather than struggling with technical limitations like file compression.
When you first considered using Bannerflow, what were your primary goals?
Noud: Initially, our main goal was to expand the creative services we offered to our studios and marketing teams. By creating animated banner ads in-house, we were able to save significant costs compared to outsourcing to agencies.
How many markets are you currently using Bannerflow for advertising in? Are there regional differences in how Bannerflow is applied or how effective it is?
Matt: We currently use Bannerflow in about six markets—the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Australia. While it's difficult to pinpoint regional differences at this stage, we do apply the platform dynamically across these markets, especially in terms of currency adaptation and age ratings.
How do different teams at SEGA use Bannerflow, and how has it been integrated into your overall workflow?
Noud: SEGA Creative Services now offers animated banner ads as part of our campaigns for major marketing beats in both the pre-launch and post-launch stages of our video games. Our US team also recently started (Summer 2024) using Bannerflow, which has helped align our workflows globally.
Besides Bannerflow, are there other tools or platforms that you use in tandem to manage campaigns? How well does Bannerflow integrate with these tools?
Noud: Our media agencies in both the US and EU have access to our Bannerflow accounts and can directly link our campaigns with their Google Campaign Manager accounts. This integration has significantly streamlined the workflow.
When you first considered using Social Dynamic Ads with Bannerflow, what were your primary goals?
Matt: The main goal was to improve paid media efficiency and move towards a performance-driven approach for our direct response-focused campaigns. In our industry, attribution can be challenging due to multiple storefronts and platforms, both physical and digital. SDAs provided a way to gather important learnings for future performance campaigns. In our tests, we saw a reduction in CPC compared to other methods, which was encouraging.
How do different teams at SEGA use Social Dynamic Ads?
Matt: It's a collaborative process. The media, creative, and campaign management teams work closely together to ideate, create, and refine ads. We evaluate which versions work from both a media and creative perspective to strike the right balance between creativity and performance.
How does Bannerflow help you customise and personalise SDAs for different audiences or markets?
Matt: We use SDAs to show different ad variants to users, identifying which is the most effective. We're still in the early stages of our journey, however, going forward we aim to be able to make ads even more tailored and relevant to our target audience.
On which platforms are you utilising SDAs? Have you found particular platforms or formats where SDAs have been especially effective?
Matt: Currently, we're running SDAs on Meta platforms. We haven't used many formats yet; mostly static versions of SDAs. As we move forward, we're planning to include TikTok, and other platforms to expand our reach.
How has using Bannerflow impacted the efficiency of your production process for SDAs?
Anna: Before Bannerflow, creating a large number of ads would take weeks for a designer working full-time. With Bannerflow, we were able to bring the time down from three weeks to one week for similar campaigns, saving about two-thirds of the production time.
What metrics do you prioritize when evaluating the performance of SDAs?
Matt: We prioritize CPC, CTR and CPA as key metrics. During our recent tests, SDAs achieved lower CPCs compared to standard ads, which was significant for us. The CPM was also notably lower, making SDAs a cost-effective solution.
How does Bannerflow enable smoother collaboration when working on SDAs
Anna: Bannerflow allows us to share review links directly with stakeholders, which simplifies the approval process. It eliminates the need for multiple file versions and enables real-time updates. This has been particularly helpful when working with our studios, creative teams, and media partners.
How does Bannerflow help ensure consistency in SDAs across different regions?
Anna: We focus on creating a unified template that can be adapted across markets, with Bannerflow we can dynamically display local currency and age ratings which helps maintain brand consistency while reducing the need for manual versioning, allowing us to generate localised ads efficiently.
How has the creative flexibility of SDAs influenced SEGA's strategy?
Matt: SDAs have allowed us to feature more products in our ads. Historically, we highlighted only a few "hero" titles, but with SDAs, we can showcase more of our catalogue, giving customers more options. This approach has helped us shift towards providing more consumer choice, which is key to increasing engagement and conversions.
What challenges have you faced with implementing SDAs, and how has Bannerflow helped address them?
Matt: One challenge was the initial setup and learning curve, particularly due to the complexity of creating the dynamic elements. However, with support from Bannerflow and collaboration within our team, we were able to overcome these challenges.
Are there areas where Bannerflow could improve when it comes to SDAs?
Matt: Expanding platform support would be beneficial. We'd love to start testing out SDAs on TikTok as well as see integration with platforms like Reddit, and YouTube. Additionally, improving the ease of use for setting up SDAs would be helpful.
How do you see SEGA's use of SDAs evolving in the future?
Matt: We plan to expand SDAs to more platforms and move towards an always-on approach, running smaller tests next year to refine our methods. Ultimately, we aim to make SDAs an integral part of our always-on campaigns as our data and e-commerce capabilities improve.
With the increasing emphasis on personalization and interactivity, how do you see SDAs helping SEGA stay ahead of these trends?
Matt: Personalization is the future of advertising, and SDAs are helping us move in that direction. Adding elements like animation and interactive features will help us engage users more effectively, capturing their attention in meaningful ways.
Any final thoughts?
Noud: The support we've received from Bannerflow has been excellent. From onboarding to ongoing assistance, the regular catch-ups have been invaluable, and the live chat has been especially helpful for quick troubleshooting. We appreciate the collaboration and look forward to continuing to innovate together.
Thank you so much for the great talk.
Boost ROI with Bannerflow’s Social Dynamic Ads
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