The Forrester Wave™ - Creative Advertising Technologies, Q4 2018

LICENSED FOR INDIVIDUAL USE ONLY
The Forrester Wave™: Creative Advertising

Technologies, Q4 2018
The 10 Providers That Matter Most And How They Stack Up
by Joanna O’Connell and Susan Bidel

November 5, 2018
Why Read This Report Key Takeaways

In our 31-criterion evaluation of creative Jivox Corporation, RevJet, Thunder, Clinch,
advertising technology (adtech) providers, And Celtra Lead The Pack
we identified the 10 most significant ones — Forrester’s research uncovered a market in which
Adacado Technologies, Adform, Celtra, Clinch, Jivox Corporation, RevJet, Thunder, Clinch, and
Flashtalking, Google, Jivox Corporation, RevJet, Celtra are Leaders; Adform, Flashtalking, Sizmek,
Sizmek, and Thunder — and researched, and Google are Strong Performers; and Adacado
analyzed, and scored them. This report shows Technologies is a Contender.
how each provider measures up and helps B2C
B2C Marketing Pros Are Looking For Creative
marketing professionals make the right choice.
Efficiencies And Speed-To-Market
The creative advertising technology market is
growing because B2C marketers recognize that,
in the programmatic era, they underestimated
the significance of creative in forging meaningful
connections with consumers — their top
challenge. This market growth is, in large part,
because B2C marketing pros increasingly trust
creative adtech providers to act as strategic
partners, advising them on top creative decisions.
Data Integrations And Omnichannel

Capabilities Are Key Differentiators
As B2C marketers seek to infuse their advertising
with data-driven relevant messaging and to
plan, execute, and measure across all channels,
new technologies are emerging to address their
needs. Vendors that can provide data integrations
that inform creative decisioning and optimization
across channels will lead the pack.
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FORRESTER.COM
FOR B2C MARKETING PROFESSIONALS
The Forrester Wave™: Creative Advertising Technologies, Q4 2018

by Joanna O’Connell and Susan Bidel

with Mary Pilecki, David Novitzky, and Christine Turley
November 5, 2018
Table Of Contents Related Research Documents

2 Prepare For The Dawn Of A New Golden The Forrester Wave™: Omnichannel Demand-
Age Of Ad Creative Side Platforms, Q2 2017
2 Creative Adtech Offers Marketers Relevancy, The Future Of Omnichannel Advertising Must Be
Efficiency, And Control Customer Obsessed
4 But The Category Is Immature In Vendor Landscape: Creative Advertising

Development And Customer Adoption Technologies, Q3 2017
4 Creative Advertising Technologies

Evaluation Overview
Evaluated Vendors And Inclusion Criteria

Share reports with colleagues.
6 Vendor Profiles Enhance your membership with
Research Share.
Leaders
Strong Performers
Contenders
15 Supplemental Material
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FOR B2C MARKETING PROFESSIONALS November 5, 2018
Prepare For The Dawn Of A New Golden Age Of Ad Creative

William Bernbach, a giant of the golden age of American advertising, said of his profession,
“Advertising is fundamentally persuasion, and persuasion happens to be not a science, but an art.”1
In the current digital age, practitioners have prioritized driving results with science and math rather
than art, and the results have been dismal: declining ad performance and compromised consumer
experiences. Creativity matters, and more creative campaigns are more effective, according to a study
by the Harvard Business Review.2 Nielsen Catalina quantifies a similar finding: Creative accounts for
47% of brand lift, the single most important factor.3 Creative ad technology platforms promise to bridge
the gulf between the art and science of advertising and to inform creative development and execution
with data that will result in compelling, relevant, and measurable advertising. But the space remains
immature, both in terms of vendors’ tenure and track records and with respect to the marketers,
publishers, and agencies who employ them.
Creative Adtech Offers Marketers Relevancy, Efficiency, And Control

Creative adtech initially emerged as two streams of capabilities — creative management platforms
(CMPs) for building and versioning audience-driven creative, and dynamic creative optimization
(DCO) for real-time, feed-based ad assembly and on-the-fly optimization of product and messaging.
Brand marketers at CPG firms leaned into the former, and data-rich, SKU-heavy organizations like
retailers and travel companies were adopting the latter.4 Increasingly, however, these capability sets
are merging to enable full management of a more streamlined and connected ad-creative life cycle —
from ad creation to optimization to reporting and insights (see Figure 1). While we expect this sector
to follow the trend toward consolidation that’s driving adtech, today, B2C marketers using creative ad
technologies will benefit from:
›› Using data-driven insights to generate relevant ads. Relevant ads make consumers more
likely to buy.5 Advertisers that attract and track website visits can apply that behavioral data to
their ads to reflect their customers’ and prospects’ browsing histories and interests and thereby
create greater relevance. Retailers, for example, can serve an ad for rain hats to customers who
have looked at or bought an umbrella in the recent past. The customer is better served by seeing
a product they’re likely to be interested in, and the advertiser increases its chance of a conversion.
That’s a win-win made possible by creative adtech vendors.
›› Enjoying faster speed-to-market. While most brands still employ agency-based designers to
develop the initial creative strategy, creative adtech vendors “take the human element out of menial
tasks” and reduce the time it takes to tailor creative to customers’ and prospects’ context and
experience, according to one marketer. This can eliminate days, or even weeks, from the process,
allowing for more relevant and timely ad content.
© 2018 Forrester Research, Inc. Unauthorized copying or distributing is a violation of copyright law. 2
Citations@forrester.com or +1 866-367-7378
›› Integrating media performance with creative for always-on optimization. There’s nothing new
about the science of A/B testing: It’s almost a hundred years old.6 What is new is the ability to
integrate the learnings of creative testing with those of digital media performance to enhance both
in an endless virtuous cycle that results in continuous improvement and always-on optimization.
The most advanced creative advertising technologies are offering this valuable integration.
›› Exercising global control from a central hub. Global marketers have long desired to maintain
control over product positioning worldwide while accommodating local market and cultural
nuances. In the past, this has created a host of labor-intensive, time-consuming, and expensive
complications. New creative ad technology platforms offer such global marketers the opportunity
to establish a central hub from which to oversee creative localization.
FIGURE 1 The Creative Process Must Be Fast, Iterative, And Data-Driven
Programmatic
audience brief
Insights
1 stage
2 “Big idea” stage
Collaborative brainstorming
Concept approval
Adtech stack
Ad server,
DSP, or
DMP
3 Design Weeks
stage
Journey-based
Programmatic storyboarding
audience-specific
production Client approval
Programmatic
optimization
Asset development
Optimization 5 4 Production
stage stage
ch
ng
ng
n
io
un
ki
iti
ct
c
Ed
lle
La
ffi
co
a
Tr
et
s
As
Hours/days
But The Category Is Immature In Development And Customer Adoption

With all that’s now possible, the creative adtech space is still in its early days. Vendors are still evolving,
pivoting from other tech categories, or both, and marketer, publisher, and agency awareness — let
alone adoption — is limited at best.7
›› Marketers are just beginning to experiment and are heavily reliant on vendor help. The client
base across the category today shows high variability in product adoption and in sophistication
of strategy and execution. Despite the industry trend toward self-service, we found a client group
that’s still heavily reliant on creative adtech vendors’ managed service capabilities, is limited in its
use of the full range of tools and capabilities (such as cross-channel storytelling and decisioning),
and is only just beginning to use these tools to streamline and improve the full ad creative life cycle.
›› Vendors have bold visions for the future, but the category feels “startup” in nature. As
a category, creative adtech vendors are inspiring in their aspirations for the future of creative,
where every ad delivered — regardless of channel, format, or device — is relevant, beautiful, and
timely, and the process of ad creation and delivery is optimized and data-driven. It’s a group that
demonstrates enthusiasm, creativity, a spirit of openness to cocreation with clients, and a knack for
problem solving. But with such openness and fluidity come risk in product development, scalability
with a growing customer base, and long-term sustainability.
Creative Advertising Technologies Evaluation Overview

To assess the state of the creative adtech market and see how the vendors stack up against each
other, Forrester evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of top creative adtech vendors. After
examining past research, user needs assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we developed a
comprehensive set of evaluation criteria. We evaluated vendors against 31 criteria, which we grouped
into three high-level buckets:
›› Current offering. Each vendor’s position on the vertical axis of the Forrester Wave™ graphic
indicates the strength of its current offering. Key criteria for these solutions include ad-building
tools; versioning; ad assembly and decisioning; cross-channel/format capabilities; ad server;
reporting and insights; and service models, training, and customer support.
›› Strategy. Placement on the horizontal axis indicates the strength of the vendors’ strategies. We
evaluated product vision, execution road map, innovation road map, supporting products and
services, and commercial models.
›› Market presence. Represented by the size of the markers on the graphic, our market presence
scores reflect each vendor’s revenue, number of customers, customer makeup by size, customer
makeup by type, number of employees by type, and geographic footprint.
Evaluated Vendors And Inclusion Criteria
Forrester included 10 vendors in the assessment: Adacado Technologies, Adform, Celtra, Clinch,
Flashtalking, Google, Jivox Corporation, RevJet, Sizmek, and Thunder (see Figure 2). Each of these
vendors has a product that:
›› Is proprietary technology. The vendor must own its own proprietary creative advertising technology.
›› Clients can use as a standalone. Clients must be able to use the creative adtech as a standalone
technology that’s not dependent on the use of other technologies (e.g., DSP and/or DMP) as part
of a stack.8
›› Is available on a self-serve basis. The client must be able to use the creative adtech on its own,
without the need of the vendor’s human capital. Vendors can provide managed service as an addition.
›› Supports desktop and mobile display formats. The creative adtech product must support, at a
minimum, desktop and mobile display, as these remain the most common scaled use cases.
FIGURE 2 Evaluated Vendors And Product Information
Vendor Product evaluated
Adacado Technologies Adacado
Adform Advertiser Edge
Celtra Celtra
Clinch Clinch Omni-Channel Dynamic Creative
Flashtalking Creative Manager & Campaign Manager
Google Display and Video 360
Jivox Corporation Jivox IQ
RevJet RevJet Ad Experience Platform
Sizmek Sizmek Advertising Suite
Thunder Thunder Experience Cloud
Vendor Profiles
We intend this evaluation of the creative adtech market to be a starting point only and encourage
clients to view detailed product evaluations and adapt criteria weightings to fit their individual needs
through the Forrester Wave Excel-based vendor comparison tool (see Figure 3 and see Figure 4). Click
the link at the beginning of this report on Forrester.com to download the tool.
FIGURE 3 Forrester Wave™: Creative Advertising Technologies, Q4 2018
Creative Advertising Technologies

Q4 2018
Strong
Challengers Contenders Performers Leaders
Stronger
current Jivox Corporation
Thunder
offering
Flashtalking Adform
RevJet
Sizmek
Clinch
Celtra
Google
Adacado Technologies
Weaker
current
offering
Weaker strategy Stronger strategy
Market presence*
*A gray marker indicates incomplete vendor participation.
FIGURE 4 Forrester Wave™: Creative Advertising Technologies Scorecard, Q4 2018
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Current offering 50% 2.56 4.23 3.40 3.52 4.20 2.67 4.49 4.38 3.71 4.60
Ad-building tools 20% 1.40 5.00 4.50 3.50 4.00 3.90 4.40 5.00 4.50 4.00
Versioning, ad assembly, and 30% 3.10 4.60 3.00 3.90 4.00 3.80 4.70 4.10 3.70 5.00
decisioning
Cross-channel/format capabilities 25% 2.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 1.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 5.00
Ad server 5% 4.00 5.00 3.00 4.00 5.00 4.00 5.00 4.00 5.00 4.00
Standard reporting tools and 5% 1.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00
insights
Service models/training/customer 15% 4.00 4.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 4.00
support
Strategy 50% 2.30 2.90 3.70 3.90 2.60 3.00 3.90 3.70 2.10 3.40
Product vision 25% 3.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 3.00
Execution road map 30% 1.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 1.00 3.00
Innovation road map 25% 1.00 1.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 1.00 3.00
Supporting products and services 10% 5.00 5.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 5.00
Commercial model 10% 5.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 5.00
Market presence 0% 1.40 3.80 2.80 2.80 4.40 3.00 3.80 3.00 3.40 4.00
Revenue 20% 1.00 5.00 3.00 1.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 1.00 5.00 3.00
Number of customers 20% 1.00 5.00 3.00 1.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 1.00 5.00 3.00
Customer makeup by size 20% 1.00 3.00 1.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 5.00 1.00 5.00
Customer makeup by type 20% 1.00 1.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 1.00 5.00
Number of employees by type 10% 5.00 5.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 5.00
Geographic footprint 10% 1.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 3.00 5.00 3.00 5.00 3.00
All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).

*Indicatesa nonparticipating vendor.
Leaders
›› Jivox Corporation offers experience and maturity relative to competitors. Jivox was founded in
2007 and has evolved its focus from “creative optimization” to “precision marketing.” The company
has experience with both direct-response and brand-focused customers, which isn’t universally
true among evaluated vendors. It also has invested in enabling customers, such as agencies, to
build on top of or alongside its tech to provide simplified workflow for media teams to use creative
adtech without having to learn the platform or work with Jivox. It already integrates with some
owned channels, including site personalization and email, and its investment in customer journey
analytics and optimization should appeal to clients interested in a cohesive, orchestrated approach
to creative messaging. Jivox’s customer references described its solution as sophisticated in its
ability to handle complex versioning and characterized the company as adaptable and highly open
to client feedback.
Large global brands with rich, complex data sets and diverse geographic footprints should
consider Jivox. One client reference noted that it had generated 350,000 assets through the vendor
in the past year in 22 languages, across countries and regions, and with a dozen-plus products.
Multiple references cited reporting for deeper analytics as an area of improvement, though Jivox
notes that several enhancements are imminent.
›› RevJet focuses on simplicity without sacrificing sophistication. RevJet is a newer entrant in

the creative adtech space, founded in 2014 and evolving out of its parent company’s ad platform
for Facebook app developers. It shares a vision with several other evaluated vendors: to enable
better creative experiences independent of the media process. But it differs in its execution, with a
significant focus on making complex tasks simple. RevJet’s unique approach to tag management,
using a single tag to deploy and manage all creatives, simplifies operational processes compared
with others that rely on a 1:1 tag to template structure. And its “app exchange” model means each
customer can create a customized RevJet instance tailored to its needs. One client described
RevJet as “consolidated and streamlined,” saying it has “learning built into the platform” and noting
that the organization went from signed contract to live creatives in market in two weeks.
We did hear that RevJet is, “still building out the product” and needs to invest in its geographic
footprint, not surprising for a newer entrant. Still, data-rich marketers looking for a software-as-a-
service (SaaS) solution and a partner to grow and innovate with should consider RevJet.
›› Thunder is making a bet on cross-channel people-based marketing.9 Thunder is a decade

old, but a recent client looking for an ad-serving alternative to (Facebook-owned) Atlas spurred
the vendor to focus on “people-based” ad serving and creative decisioning. Its stated vision is,
“An internet without bad ads.” Thunder’s approach is unique among evaluated vendors, featuring
a people-based ID framework that fully incorporates LiveRamp’s identity graph and sits atop the
Advertising ID Consortium framework with server-to-server syncing.10 This makes cross-channel/
format storyboarding and decisioning possible, though this feature is new. Customers mentioned
Thunder’s overall usability and ease of use, with one client reference specifically noting it was “a
platform that marketers, not just designers, could use,” and another stating: “It’s really intuitive. It
allows us to be very, very nimble.” Thunder also received praise for its client partnership and its
openness to client feedback.
Customers told us that Thunder’s template creation features need work and wish the platform
worked in even more formats. But marketers looking for a solution that has put its eggs into the
people-based approach to ad creative and ad serving should consider this vendor.
›› Clinch is an agile managed-service-only company with great innovation instincts. Or so says

one of its client references: “They are so scrappy and quick moving, and there’s no conversation
that’s an issue. If they have something that exists, they spin it up in a week. With quality. They are
really solid partners.” Clinch, which was founded in 2015, received high customer reference survey
marks for its ad-building tools, the ad formats and channels it supports, its versioning capabilities,
and its cross-channel capabilities. According to another reference, “Clinch specializes in cross-
platform, cross-format. It’s their core business.” The company is very bottom-line-oriented, too.
Customers really appreciate Clinch’s focus on enabling faster or better creative building and
testing, optimizing for ROI/return on ad spend, and planning and optimizing creative for direct
response objectives.
Clinch will appeal to advertisers that don’t need to immediately exercise control over their operations
when they can outsource to a responsible partner. Clinch’s clients like its customer service and
readiness to collaborate, innovate, and adapt. The trend in adtech is toward self-serve, and Clinch’s
clients are no exception. They universally noted that Clinch is available today only on a managed
service basis and that they look forward to the day when they’re able to operate more independently.
›› Celtra is a good partner for global advertisers that want to localize creative. According to
customer references, Celtra understands the challenges faced by marketers who wish to respect
local cultural nuances while coordinating their advertising initiatives from a central hub. Celtra,
founded in 2006 as a mobile-first company, solves for the “huge inefficiencies when it comes to
local markets,” explained one reference, by solving for “workflow management and process.”
Celtra gave the client’s global team “visibility into what was being done in local markets.” We noted
its capabilities to streamline the creative process and improve speed-to-market and to enable
faster or better creative testing; its ad-building tools; the formats and channels it supports; and its
cross-device targeting and measurement functionality.
Celtra, which will appeal to advertisers exploring the potential that creative adtech offers for better,
more relevant ads, received the highest praise possible from customers for its customer service
and support, and references generally applauded the Celtra team for its flexibility and ability to
collaborate. One reference said, “We can brief them on something, explain we have a challenge,
and the chief product officer will get on the phone and we’ll solve the challenge together.” But
another said the Celtra platform is “not very user friendly or easy to understand to produce
creative.” If Celtra’s strength lies in hands-on, labor-intensive support, it won’t scale over time, and
that will become a problem as it grows.
Strong Performers
›› Adform incorporates creative ad technology in a solid full-stack buy-side platform.

Advertisers looking for a one-stop shop would be wise to look at Adform. The platform, which was
founded in 2002, was a Strong Performer in both The Forrester Wave™: Omnichannel Demand-
Side Platforms, Q2 2017, and The Forrester Wave™: Data Management Platforms, Q2 2017. This
combination offers advertisers the option of keeping partnerships to a minimum while getting
maximum benefits. One customer reference for this report said: “It is important that the companies
we work with are full-stack solutions. They can operate on both ends of the funnel: traditional ad
serving, DSP, and reporting. There is no data loss, and we can streamline the whole process.”
Customers were pleased with Adform’s authoring and ad-building tools and the ad formats
and channels that the platform supports. Customer references noted Adform’s ability to foster
collaboration between media and creative teams and to save money for its clients on ad creative
development and management.
Creative ad technology is an emerging discipline and requires focus and dedication to identify
those capabilities that are critical to excellence versus those that are nice to have or may even
prove to be distractions. While the company will serve the needs of clients looking for soup-to-nuts
solutions, some advertisers might find that Adform, with its full-stack approach, doesn’t sufficiently
focus on developing more-sophisticated standalone creative adtech tools. In fact, Adform’s
customers rated its product strategy and road map at the bottom of its list of accomplishments.
›› Flashtalking, one of the initial innovators, focuses on foundational capabilities. Flashtalking,

founded in 2009, describes itself as “a data-driven ad management and analytics technology
company [that uses] data to personalize advertising in real time.” Core to this functionality is
Flashtalking’s decision tree, cited by customer references as a differentiator: “We really like the
decision tool [. . .]. Probably the best out there. We work with a lot of partners directly, and they’re
always quite impressed by the decision tree and how it works.” Flashtalking offers a combination
of managed service and self-serve that offers clients significant control. “The campaign creation is
done by Flashtalking, the original and creative templates. They do the hard setup and we do the
optimization and update the messaging,” states a client reference. Flashtalking received customer
praise for its ad-building tools, data ingestion capabilities, reporting and insights, and ability to
facilitate optimizing to reach and frequency goals.
Flashtalking will appeal to advertisers looking for partners with long experience and a
pragmatic approach to creative ad technology. More than one customer reference suggested
that Flashtalking could be more proactive in terms of thought leadership: “Whenever we ask a
question, they’re always eager to jump in . . . but they could share better all the capabilities they
have. I’m fairly positive that there are a lot of other cool things we could be doing; we just don’t
know about them.” Another bemoaned the company’s lack of a cross-device decision tree, which
inhibits cross-device storytelling.
›› Sizmek is evolving from a sea of logos to an adtech stack with creative capabilities. Sizmek
has spent nearly 20 years evolving from a rich media ad server (Eyeblaster) to a house of adtech
brands, including Peer39, Rocketfuel, and StrikeAd. Its mission is to bring together audience,
media, and creative ad management into a single platform, and it took a big step forward with the
recent launch of its unified DSP. Sizmek has specifically set its sights on helping agencies, with a
plan to make the platform modular and customizable for agencies to build on. This larger focus,
however, means that its creative solution isn’t as innovative or advanced in areas such as formats
supported and optimization capabilities as those of several other vendors we evaluated. Creative
and media decisioning – a potential long-term differentiator – could have deeper synchronicity.
Customers value Sizmek’s independence in the market, see the value the full-stack offering can
bring, and praise its strategic and tactical customer service and support. But they also stated that
the constant changes the business has undergone are distracting and that using multiple platforms
has been frustrating. Existing customers of Sizmek will value the company’s progress toward
making its unified adtech stack vision a reality and will benefit from a single ad-serving solution for
creative and media.
›› Google’s broad and deep adtech stack delivers integration across media and creative.
Google, often an early acquirer into new adtech categories such as ad serving and programmatic
media, purchased creative ad platform Teracent nearly 10 years ago. While newer creative adtech
competitors benefit from building for the market needs of today, Google has had plenty of time to
integrate its solution into its larger adtech stack, offering unified media and creative decisioning,
unlike several other evaluated vendors (several of which explicitly cite not decisioning on media
as a point of pride). Google dominates in the ad-serving market and so benefits from customer
entrenchment, though the recent announcement to limit advertisers’ access to data collected via
AdID has opened the door for alternative ad-serving providers, among them Flashtalking, Sizmek,
and Thunder.11
Google brings a scaled deterministic cross-device graph but today offers it only within format/
channel sequencing. Google’s creative adtech customer service is relatively limited, and managed
service is available only through “certified partners.” Marketers already using the Google stack
for media management should consider Google but be mindful that it lags newer, more focused
creative adtech solutions in innovation and customer support. Google declined to participate in our
research. Scores are based on Forrester estimates.
Contenders
›› Adacado Technologies helps smaller agencies deliver seamless creative optimization.

Agencies need not go to the expense of staffing their own creative optimization teams when they
can outsource to companies like Adacado Technologies, founded in 2011, to deliver these services
to their clients. With DSP integrations and good match rates in place, Adacado became “the
backbone and support of the dynamic aspect” for one agency client reference. Adacado received
high customer praise for enabling faster or better creative building for the ad formats and channels
it supports, its versioning and in-flight decisioning capabilities, and its customer service and
support. One client agency explained that working with Adacado “[. . .] allows us to retain certain
advertisers that are mainly using us for dynamic campaigns or these types of executions while they
wouldn’t use [us] for other means.”
Adacado, which will appeal to small and midsize agencies looking to build their creative clientele
without investing in personnel, has work to do on its cross-channel channel sequencing and
frequency capabilities and its cross-device storytelling capabilities. The company, as far as its
clients are concerned, is focusing on the here and now and not communicating a compelling long-
term corporate strategy.
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Supplemental Material
Online Resource
The online version of Figure 3 is an Excel-based vendor comparison tool that provides detailed product
evaluations and customizable rankings. Click the link at the beginning of this report on Forrester.com to
download the tool.
Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave
Forrester used a combination of three data sources to assess the strengths and weaknesses of each
solution. We evaluated the vendors participating in this Forrester Wave, in part, using materials that
they provided to us by August 6, 2018.
›› Vendor surveys. Forrester surveyed vendors on their capabilities as they relate to the evaluation
criteria. Once we analyzed the completed vendor surveys, we conducted vendor calls, where
necessary, to gather details of vendor qualifications.
›› Product demos. We asked vendors to conduct demonstrations of their products’ functionality. We

used findings from these product demos to validate details of each vendor’s product capabilities.
›› Customer reference calls. To validate product and vendor qualifications, Forrester also conducted
reference calls with three of each vendor’s current customers.
The Forrester Wave Methodology
We conduct primary research to develop a list of vendors that meet our criteria for evaluation in this
market. From that initial pool of vendors, we narrow our final list. We choose these vendors based on:
1) product fit; 2) customer success; and 3) Forrester client demand. We eliminate vendors that have
limited customer references and products that don’t fit the scope of our evaluation. Vendors marked as
incomplete participants met our defined inclusion criteria but declined to participate or contributed only
partially to the evaluation.
After examining past research, user need assessments, and vendor and expert interviews, we develop
the initial evaluation criteria. To evaluate the vendors and their products against our set of criteria,
we gather details of product qualifications through a combination of lab evaluations, questionnaires,
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and we adjust the evaluations to provide the most accurate view of vendor offerings and strategies.
We set default weightings to reflect our analysis of the needs of large user companies — and/or
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methodology that every Forrester Wave follows, please visit The Forrester Wave™ Methodology Guide
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Integrity Policy
We conduct all our research, including Forrester Wave evaluations, in accordance with the Integrity Policy
posted on our website.
Survey Methodology
Forrester fielded its Forrester’s Q4 2018 Creative Advertising Technologies Forrester Wave™ Customer
Reference Online Survey to 31 marketing professionals who use a creative advertising technology
included in this Forrester Wave evaluation or outside of it. Vendors recruited the majority of these
respondents to complete a survey about their satisfaction and use of their technology.
Forrester fielded the survey in August 2018. Respondent incentives included a summary of the
research results when the Forrester Wave was published.
Endnotes
1
Source: Adi Ignatius, “Advertising Is an Art—and a Science,” Harvard Business Review, March 2013 (https://hbr.
org/2013/03/advertising-is-an-art-and-a-science).
2
Source: Werner Reinartz and Peter Saffert, “Creativity in Advertising: When It Works and When It Doesn’t,” Harvard
Business Review, June 2013 (https://hbr.org/2013/06/creativity-in-advertising-when-it-works-and-when-it-doesnt).
3
Source: “When it Comes to Advertising Effectiveness, What is Key?” Nielsen, October 9, 2017 (https://www.nielsen.
com/us/en/insights/news/2017/when-it-comes-to-advertising-effectiveness-what-is-key.html).
4
CPG is consumer packaged goods; SKU is stock-keeping units. See the Forrester report “Vendor Landscape: Creative
Advertising Technologies, Q3 2017.”
5
Source: Rebecca Walker Reczek, Christopher Summers, and Robert Smith, “Targeted Ads Don’t Just Make You More
Likely to Buy — They Can Change How You Think About Yourself,” Harvard Business Review, April 4, 2016 (https://hbr.
org/2016/04/targeted-ads-dont-just-make-you-more-likely-to-buy-they-can-change-how-you-think-about-yourself).
6
Source: Amy Gallo, “A Refresher on A/B Testing,” Harvard Business Review, June 28, 2017 (https://hbr.org/2017/06/a-
refresher-on-ab-testing).
7
In this report, creative adtech is the only category in the Experiment quadrant. See the Forrester report “The Forrester
Tech Tide™: Adtech For B2C Marketers, Q2 2018.”
8
DSP is demand-side platform; DMP is data management platform.
9
Disjointed, channel-, and/or format-based ad experiences have been the norm since the advent of advertising, but
digital advertising’s heavy reliance on the cookie as a proxy for a person has finally revealed itself as flawed and
incomplete. People-based marketing means an orientation around marketing to the consumer rather than to his or her
cookies, individual devices, or disjointed identity states. For more information on what this means in the context of
customer-obsessed omnichannel advertising, see the Forrester report “The Future Of Omnichannel Advertising Must
Be Customer Obsessed.”
10
The Advertising ID Consortium was launched by several buy- and sell-side adtech players to provide a scaled identity
framework that could serve as an alternative to the walled gardens like Google. Early members included AppNexus,
Index Exchange, LiveIntent, LiveRamp, and MediaMath. But since its launch, the Consortium has hit some bumps,
with MediaMath withdrawing in 2017 over concerns of an overreliance on LiveRamp’s IdentityLink and AppNexus’ new
parent company, AT&T, withdrawing AppNexus in early October of 2018.
11
Source: Susan Bidel, “Everything That’s Old Is New Again,” Forrester Blogs, May 9, 2018 (https://go.forrester.com/blogs/
everything-thats-old-is-new-again/) and “P&G Credits Marketing Efficiency For Strong Sales; Facebook Wrongly Blocks
Some Ads,” AdExchanger, October 22, 2018 (https://adexchanger.com/ad-exchange-news/monday-10222018/).
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The Forrester Wave™: Creative Advertising

by Joanna O’Connell and Susan Bidel

Why Read This Report Key Takeaways

Data Integrations And Omnichannel

The Forrester Wave™: Creative Advertising Technologies, Q4 2018

by Joanna O’Connell and Susan Bidel

Table Of Contents Related Research Documents

4 But The Category Is Immature In Vendor Landscape: Creative Advertising

4 Creative Advertising Technologies

Evaluated Vendors And Inclusion Criteria

Forrester Research, Inc., 60 Acorn Park Drive, Cambridge, MA 02140 USA

Prepare For The Dawn Of A New Golden Age Of Ad Creative

Creative Adtech Offers Marketers Relevancy, Efficiency, And Control

FIGURE 1 The Creative Process Must Be Fast, Iterative, And Data-Driven

But The Category Is Immature In Development And Customer Adoption

Creative Advertising Technologies Evaluation Overview

Evaluated Vendors And Inclusion Criteria

FIGURE 2 Evaluated Vendors And Product Information

Vendor Product evaluated

Adacado Technologies Adacado

Adform Advertiser Edge

Clinch Clinch Omni-Channel Dynamic Creative

Flashtalking Creative Manager & Campaign Manager

Google Display and Video 360

Jivox Corporation Jivox IQ

RevJet RevJet Ad Experience Platform

Sizmek Sizmek Advertising Suite

Thunder Thunder Experience Cloud

FIGURE 3 Forrester Wave™: Creative Advertising Technologies, Q4 2018

Creative Advertising Technologies

Weaker strategy Stronger strategy

*A gray marker indicates incomplete vendor participation.

FIGURE 4 Forrester Wave™: Creative Advertising Technologies Scorecard, Q4 2018

All scores are based on a scale of 0 (weak) to 5 (strong).

›› RevJet focuses on simplicity without sacrificing sophistication. RevJet is a newer entrant in

›› Thunder is making a bet on cross-channel people-based marketing.9 Thunder is a decade

›› Clinch is an agile managed-service-only company with great innovation instincts. Or so says

›› Adform incorporates creative ad technology in a solid full-stack buy-side platform.

›› Flashtalking, one of the initial innovators, focuses on foundational capabilities. Flashtalking,

›› Adacado Technologies helps smaller agencies deliver seamless creative optimization.

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Data Sources Used In This Forrester Wave

›› Product demos. We asked vendors to conduct demonstrations of their products’ functionality. We

The Forrester Wave Methodology

Forrester’s research and insights are tailored to your role and

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