Susan Zou
No matter your industry, calling, or walk of life, AI has become a critical part of the conversation. However, its implications cannot be underestimated or overlooked. Good, bad or indifferent, AI is here to stay. Like most things in life, progress and achievement come from balance and collaboration, and this is exactly where Kargo fits into the AI conversation. As a valued partner to brands and agencies throughout the advertising industry, Kargo works hard to improve efficiency and drive top-level campaign performance through creative automation. Understanding it's a balancing act, we pair our unique AI technology with personal expertise to help our clients easily navigate the nuances of the industry, optimize their ad creatives and improve turnaround time. This one-two punch results in better performance and increased ROI for brands.
Even in this new frontier of AI, creative is still essential for driving top performance, and strong creative execution is said to be responsible for a whopping 70% of ROI according to Google1. Generative AI ads in particular were recently shown to perform strongly, with 2/3 of GenAI creatives achieving better than average performance2. With this being such a crucial factor in performance, the power to optimize creative assets in real-time by applying creative enhancements is critical to success. The first step in creative optimization involves background removal which isolates the product completely and allows for additional overlays and visuals to be applied as enhancements. This process may involve several steps: removing the original background, cropping the image so it’s centered or filling in white space and borders with branded coloring. Our AI technology achieves up to 98% background removal accuracy, which is a big deal for brands with an extensive product feed. And it gets even better: with our team’s diligent Q+A efforts and oversight, this percentage increases to an impressive 99% while our competitors hover at 98% accuracy. This percentage difference may seem negligible, but it can lead to a significant amount of lost revenue with several products left unoptimized. With Kargo’s ability to fully remove the original product background, dynamic creative overlays and other design elements can be easily implemented to further optimize ads for engagement and performance.
Currently, our extensive AI suite includes the following features: background removal, AI copy, AI feed rules, Smart Crop and Smart Fill. Each component works together to boost efficiency and increase campaign performance. Here’s how:
AI copy generates new ad copy suggestions based on brand context/voice, past performance, and seasonality. It takes learnings from past campaign performance to inform future copy variations for testing. Key benefits include:
- Staying consistent with brand tone/voice
- Maintaining content seasonality based on the time of year
- Providing immediate copy suggestions (whether or not a prompt is included)
- Reducing the time and effort spent on copywriting
AI feed rules gives advertisers the ability to create rules for DPA that would normally be confusing or time-consuming to write. This component leads to higher accuracy and significant time savings. Additional benefits include:
- Greater accessibility and ease of use for all users, regardless of their technical expertise
- More sophisticated strategies for media & creative elements such as: conditional promo language & creative based on brand, category, % off, etc.
- Time-sensitive feed updates to power countdown designs, weekly circular refreshes, and sales info - all while avoiding ad reviews and learning phase resets
- Smarter product filtering based on merged data including ratings, margin, inventory levels, BNPL (buy now, pay later) programs and more
Smart Crop utilizes machine learning that can automatically crop an image to the most exciting part of the product, ensuring optimal viewability and creative impact while simultaneously testing various designs to assess impact.
The Smart Fill capability can replace a plain white background with either the most prominent color from the image or a border to create a seamless backdrop.
While AI can provide significant benefits, there are some potential drawbacks, including the possibility of errors and a lack of contextual understanding for specific tasks. To address the concerns associated with AI, Kargo offers the Smart Preview technology to ensure that final executions are not left entirely to the discretion of AI. This technology gives brands the opportunity to easily review all campaigns before they launch, ensuring that their final product is high-quality and consistent with their brand messaging and tone.
It’s time to make AI work for you with Kargo’s full suite of automation tools. Contact us now and secure turnkey optimization and better results for your brand!
