AI Gets Creative: RBL + Pencil Deliver Higher ROAS by Generating Data-Driven, On-Brand Ad Creative

Smarter Facebook Algorithm Poses a Creative Asset Generation Challenge

As Facebook/Instagram and its algorithm have advanced over the years, ad optimizations and targeting have become less and less important. Instead, succeeding on these platforms now relies on effective ad creative (both still images and videos) to differentiate your product and your company, drive user engagement, and drive traffic to your website.

Brands need new and differentiated ad creative on an extremely frequent basis to be able to scale customer acquisition and growth. But it’s rare for brands to have the creative or financial bandwidth to be able to actually do that regularly to beat the algorithm, if you will, on a regular basis. 

So how can brands find the bandwidth to step up the cadence of ad creative development and scaled ad testing to improve their effectiveness?
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RBL + Pencil Use AI to Create Data-Driven Ad Creative at Scale

RBL has teamed with Pencil, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based creative platform, to help clients generate social media ad creative at scale. Pencil’s platform pulls in your customer data and raw creative assets – like brand colors, fonts, imagery and key messages – for its AI to use to create effective, data-driven image and video ads in a range of sizes and lengths. Within 15 minutes, you’ll have 6-, 10- and 15-second videos and ad-copy variants for immediate use in Facebook and Instagram ads.

These assets remove much of the subjectivity from developing ad creative, relying instead on a combination of AI-predicted outcomes and score insights that not only can help steer your ad creative strategy, but can also help improve your raw assets and ROAS going forward. Pencil’s platform makes use of creative techniques that have been proven to drive conversion, but also maintain the look, voice and feel of your brand.
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Example Pencil Ads - Made by machines, loved by humans
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Assets created and implemented using RBL + Pencil have several advantages over the more limited Facebook Dynamic Creative. Pencil’s platform doesn’t require inputting the final version of creative into the system, and provides clear data on winning creative asset combinations. Pencil is much better at helping to scale up creative efforts and drive smarter, data-backed asset creation.
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The Data Tells a Compelling Success Story

RBL has been a key agency partner for Pencil, enabling clients to integrate Pencil’s AI-based platform into their ad-creation strategy, as well as providing real-world feedback to test and refine the tool.
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Today, nearly all of RBL’s clients generate Facebook and Instagram ad creative through the platform and they’re seeing significant improvements on previous portfolio benchmarks:

• 17% increase in CTR
• 9% decrease in CPA
• 200% increase in number of weekly creative ad tests
• 15% increase in Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)

These results are also giving RBL clients greater insights as to which aspects of the AI-generated ad creative are driving improvements in CTR and CTA. This AI-enabled visibility into the performance of specific ad creative elements facilitates even greater and more efficient gains into the future. 

To find out how RBL + Pencil can help you scale up your ad creative efforts and improve your return on ad spend, contact RBL today.