Release Date: 10/28/2020

Deployment Overview

In this release, users will see some major changes within the client libraries section and is set to help support multiple changes in the coming releases. We also added an Advertiser DBA field to allow users to control the advertiser name intended for advertising content. We have taken the time to add some additional “count” values allowing users to apply “condition” to count values within the feed. And as always some general bugs and task items to further improve user experience. 

Release Details

“Doing Business As”

• Advertiser Settings: Ad New Text Field for Advertiser_dba

• Dynamic Video: Digital Asset Advertiser DBA Name Association

These two features are the first step in allowing clients to scale templates by allowing the use of the advertiser name across product offerings to help scalability and quality control measures for clients. Many clients utilize the dealer name throughout their client’s advertising content from keywords, content, and text ad copy. We know this is a repetitive and inefficient task at times and wanted to implement a way to reduce some repetitive tasks client typically considered a standard element in the creative creation process. 

To support this we needed to first capture the value clients wanted to express in advertising content so users will now see “Advertiser DBA” as a new field within the advertiser settings page. This field is not required but can be utilized in the future should a client want to leverage the field.

This first implementation will be available for the use of the DBA name value inside video templates. This value will be passed and applied when rendering video assets. If no DBA name is listed the value passed for the template is the “Advertiser Name”.

We have several use cases where utilizing this information will be beneficial and these will be introduced over the course of the 2021 development roadmap.

Client Libraries:

The client libraries will be going through significant changes over the next few releases. In this release, we focus on some core redesign elements which we will review below. I will briefly touch on the next items to be implemented and how they will be related once that is all complete.

• First you will see a general clean up to the libraries page and the views include the following items:

  • A Last Edited Column showing the date in which the library was last edited.

    • This will become a useful field in the near future to allow a user to make campaign updates for inventory added after a certain date

  • A Column Showing the Creation date of the library

  • Alignment of the Edit, Delete & Clone Button

  • An Export Feed Option

    • This will allow users to easily export an existing library make changes and then re-upload the file. The hope is to improve operation efficiencies for editing tasks.

• Second we’ve built the foundation of a Global Inventory that will be updated when necessary and then publish these updates to clients who want to subscribe to them. The intention is for clients to still maintain the effectiveness of their libraries but we will update our library at least 2x a year with additional updates as needed.

• And Finally to support the process of updating libraries we have started the infrastructure and notification process to alert clients when those changes are being made and then actionable items to take once the updates are published.

  • The alert process and the publication of the update date will be helpful for clients who want to update their campaigns when new inventory is published

Search Templates: Support The Use of Library Inventory Value Alternates

The first iteration is the use of “Alternate Values”. The libraries will now contain 3 new columns. These columns are considered “Alternates” and can be used in conjunction with the original value or as a replacement depending on the needs of the client.

For Example, a client might want to use the original manufacturer name of “Chevrolet” and also an alternate value “Chevy”

Alternatively, let’s say the client needs to replace a value like “Accord Sedan” or “Accord SDN” with just the value of “Accord”. This new field allows the user to have more control of the values utilized in their keywords, ad copy, and the url.

To use the alternate value function we have added three new template placeholders. Those are:

Make_Alt

Model_Alt

Trim_Alt

When using these placeholders it is not necessary to have a value in every alternate field. If the inventory runs and there is no alternate the system will revert to use the original version of the value.

Additional Pre-Defined Count Attributes

Previously we created a new filter attribute for Make and Model counts but these values included both new and used units. To help add additional segmenting options we have now added the ability to include counts for new or used units. To utilize the filters it is required to include a condition filter to ensure counts are accurate. The new attribute names are: Make Count Condition and Model Count Condition.

Here is an example of the filter applied to a template

There are two uses case this feature is meant to solve for clients.

1. Create custom bidding strategies based upon volume of inventory

   • For example in the illustration above the applied filter is applying this template to used & certified inventory with a model count over 6. So this means it would include Mustangs if there were 7 but would not if there were only 5.

2. Control Template behavior based upon volume of inventory.

   • For Example, currently templates will turn ad groups off when inventory hits “0”. With this feature you can turn ad groups off when inventory get “Low” saw less than 2.

Minor Bugs and Tasks

Below are general fixes during the sprint release:
3645 Advertiser: Save Changes Redirect
3626 Create New Master Inventory Library Update Alert
3625 Create New Global Inventory Library For Automotive Clients
3606 Tooltip info not showing as expected
3224 Dynamic Search: Show Auto Template Filter Settings
3627 Update Client Libraries page to include last edited column and align edit/delete/clone/see changes buttons