Why Yellowhead’s Alison platform won Technical Innovation of the Year
Yellowhead won the ‘Technical Innovation’ category at The Drum Awards for the Digital Industries 2021. Here, the team behind the winning entry reveal the secrets of this successful project...
The challenge
In a post-IDFA world, the role of ad creative in engaging and converting consumers will grow exponentially to make up for the absence of customer-level personalization data. But while marketers are focusing on analyzing campaign KPIs and performance data, they often miss out on the critical importance of creative.
The innovation
In 2019, Yellowhead launched the Alison platform to revolutionize performance marketing. As an industry-leading analytics platform, Alison combines technology, data, and creativity to design ad creative that engages and converts. Alison uses data derived from proprietary computer vision technology and machine learning algorithms to help marketers drive the greatest possible advertising campaign performance.
Alison uses competitive intelligence to assess the performance of each individual campaign within its vertical and detects creative fatigue within long-running campaigns. Alison empowers advertisers to both understand their own creative performance in context and analyze the impact of specific elements within each creative.
Ad creative and performance marketing management were once strictly manual processes, but Alison arms marketers with the AI-powered tools to quantify, analyze, and optimize their campaigns at scale. By introducing the right creative elements — from color schemes and music to copy and characters — to appropriate audiences on the perfect platforms like Facebook, Google, TikTok, and Snapchat, Alison takes the guesswork out of ad creative and puts technical innovation squarely in the brand marketer’s toolbox.
Yellowhead’s full-funnel approach optimizes marketing budgets with precision using advanced machine-learning algorithms, real-time data visualization, revolutionary multi-variate testing, and a talented in-house creative studio. From banners to videos, playables and beyond, Yellowhead’s creative studio is redefining the standard of ad creatives with a results-oriented approach. We partner closely with our clients to get the most out of Alison, including forming creative strategies and conceptualizing, copywriting, producing, and animating their ad creative informed by Alison’s insights.
The clients
We’ve worked with a number of major brands, including Zynga, King, Ubisoft, Warner Bros., P&G, Tinder, Airbnb, Twitter, Intuit, and more. Yellowhead also partners with the biggest platforms in the industry; we are a Facebook Marketing Partner for Creative and Campaign Management, Premier Google Partner, Snapchat Partner, TikTok Marketing Partner, and Adjust Solutions Partner. Yellowhead saw a 35% increase in revenue year over year from 2019 to 2020, and has a forecasted growth of 37% to 40% for 2020-2021.
In 2020, Yellowhead took the innovation of Alison even further with the launch of a SaaS platform.
“Having access to Alison and its deep creative insights gives us a very clear understanding of which creative elements resonate most deeply with our target audiences so that we can optimize campaign performance throughout the entire marketing funnel.” Maria Waters, Head of Conversion Optimization at Zynga.
This entry was a winner at The Drum Awards for the Digital Industries 2021. Find out which of The Drum Awards are currently open for entry.