In June 2020, during the height of the pandemic, we reached out to the digital ad industry with Call for Creative.

The initiative offered five brands complimentary access to IBM Watson Advertising Accelerator ("Accelerator") for purpose-driven campaigns to help them stay connected to their audiences. Accelerator delivers personalized, high-performing creative at scale by harnessing AI to predict the optimal combination of creative elements based on key signals.

Non-profits aren’t the first you may think of to lean into advanced technology, but as our world grappled with some of the most challenging issues of our time, the Ad Council, a non-profit organization that addresses the nation’s most pressing issues through creative public service advertising campaigns, recognized the need to take a new approach to connecting with their audiences and fulfill their quest to leverage communications to tackle the most pressing issues of our time. And time is of the essence.

In June 2020, during the height of the pandemic, we reached out to the digital ad industry with Call for Creative.

The initiative offered five brands complimentary access to IBM Watson Advertising Accelerator for purpose-driven campaigns to help them stay connected to their audiences.

The Ad Council was one of the advertisers selected and used Accelerator to educate and bring about awareness of their “Love Has No Labels” campaign’s “Fight for Freedom” effort centered around racial injustice, bias, and equality.

The Ad Council tapped into Accelerator to predict and serve the optimal combination of creative elements that would resonate best with their target audiences to drive education and campaign engagement.

Accelerator leverages machine learning to analyze the hundreds of data signals that surround each consumer engagement to assemble user-specific ad variations that deliver on a brand’s KPIs.

The power of AI technology revolutionizes how marketers should think about audience engagement.

The Ad Council was one of the advertisers selected for the 2020 Call for Creative and used IBM Watson Advertising Accelerator to educate and bring about awareness of their “Love Has No Labels” campaign’s “Fight for Freedom” effort centered around racial injustice, bias, and equality.

The Ad Council was able to tap into Accelerator to predict and serve the optimal combination of creative elements that would resonate best with their target audiences to help drive education and campaign engagement.

Accelerator leverages machine learning to analyze the hundreds of cookieless data signals that surround each consumer engagement to assemble user-specific ad variations that deliver on a brand’s KPIs.

The power of AI technology revolutionizes how marketers should think about audience engagement.

Accelerator predicted and assembled creative variants from a series of three templates - Action, Unite, and Resist. Each template included elements that were scored and weighted against consumer action, including a series of three headlines, three backgrounds, and three calls-to-action.

While the three creative variant templates approached the messaging differently, they were focused on the same final action - educating consumers about the Ad Council’s Love Has No Labels “Fight for Freedom” effort, and driving consumers to learn, act, and donate to the fight against racial injustice.

Consumers were served curated creative at scale by harnessing AI to predict the most performant combination of elements based on key data signals like consumer reaction, weather, and time of day.

Campaign creative was served across The Weather Channel app and weather.com across desktop, mobile web, iPhone app, and Android app.

The business impact was clear, AI technology can help brands everywhere not only survive, but thrive - even in the face of the COVID pandemic.

With Accelerator’s predictive technology, the Ad Council’s campaign generated:

81 creative variations

+113% CTR from start to end of campaign

69% increase in conversions (actions on site)

In addition, the Ad Council gained a deeper understanding of which creative elements resonated best with different audiences, including that strong, action-oriented CTAs resonated most, and creative engagement similarities were found between F18-34 and M35+, and M18-34 and F35+.

Given the campaign’s success, the Ad Council is currently leveraging Accelerator again to power their “It’s Up to You” vaccine education effort, addressing issues related to combatting COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. The first campaign flight generated 135 unique creative variations and served nearly 20 million impressions.

The business impact was clear, AI technology can help brands everywhere not only survive, but thrive - even in the face of the COVID pandemic.

With Accelerator’s predictive technology, the Ad Council’s campaign generated:

81 creative variations

+113% CTR from start to end of campaign

69% increase in conversions (actions on site)

In addition, the Ad Council gained a deeper understanding of which creative elements resonated best with different audiences, including that strong, action-oriented CTAs resonated most, and creative engagement similarities were found between F18-34 and M35+, and M18-34 and F35+.

Given the campaign’s success, the Ad Council is currently leveraging Accelerator again to power their “It’s Up to You” vaccine education effort, addressing issues related to combatting COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. The first campaign flight generated 135 unique creative variations and served nearly 20 million impressions.