In Context with Innovid: The power of context and dynamic creative

In this installment of Wurl’s In Context interview series, Wurl’s Tori Owens sat down with Innovid’s Chris Murphy to discuss how CTV advertising strategies are evolving. The conversation highlights a shift from viewing context as a targeting parameter to using it as a critical creative input—where advertisers focus not just on where an ad runs, but on which creative is best suited for each moment.

Murphy emphasized that creative drives a significant share of campaign performance—often as much as 50%—yet it’s frequently underutilized. As contextual solutions become more sophisticated, including AI-powered, scene-level insights, advertisers can begin to align ads with the emotional tone and environment of the content itself.

These richer signals help advertisers determine which message, visual, or offer is most likely to resonate in that specific moment, making dynamic creative optimization far more impactful.

That approach came to life in a joint Innovid and Wurl campaign for a QSR brand. Wurl identified emotionally-relevant content environments, while Innovid dynamically assembled creative elements, including localized messaging tailored to specific geographic locations. By pairing emotional alignment with tailored creative, the QSR campaign delivered results that exceeded previous benchmarks—showcasing how context and creativity work best when activated together.

Customers and consumers want more personalized content. They like the relevance. Sometimes it’s not necessarily a frequency problem; it’s a creative problem. You don’t want to see the same ad multiple times, but you may need to see that brand a few times to think about purchasing.”

Chris Murphy

SVP, Strategy & Business Development
Innovid

In Context is a Wurl original video series featuring short-form conversations with industry leaders exploring the impact of contextual targeting in CTV. Each episode dives into how emerging technologies are helping advertisers unlock smarter creative strategies, improve performance, and drive better outcomes on the biggest screen in the home.

Transcript

Tori: Chris, to start, I must ask, because it’s in my eye level, what do your socks say?

Chris: They say “ready”. These are Innovid sales kick-off socks. They go, “ready,” “set,” “go.” And so I’m ready. I’m ready for the interview today.

Tori: I love it. Awesome. Well, for viewers watching, can you give us a quick overview of yourself and Innovid, and how advertisers can leverage your solutions to enhance performance on CTV?

Chris: Innovid is many things in the market. We deliver, we create, we optimize, and we measure across all screens, all devices, inclusive of social.

Tori: And we know that Innovid has always been at the forefront of personalized and dynamic ad experiences. So how do some of the new contextual targeting solutions, for example, leveraging AI to better understand content in real time, enhance what’s possible creatively, in your opinion?

Chris: I love having more data signals available to be able to optimize creative, as well as design and assemble creative as well.

Creative is driving at least 50% of performance for a campaign, and sometimes that’s forgotten. Sometimes the ad is rotating in that tag, and you’re not sure, as the media buyer, which ad ran for which target you just served.

And so when you bring all of it together, and with AI adding more granular elements of that piece of content, whether it’s an emotion, whether it’s sentiment, it’s more signals for us in that last step of the process to choose the creative or assemble the creative, deliver the best one possible in that moment for that consumer.

Tori: I’m glad you brought up the topic of emotion, because I’m curious to get your take. What’s the potential you see to connect emotional alignment and dynamic creative optimization? And I’m curious to hear any results you’ve seen.

Chris: Yeah, we actually partnered with Wurl on one of those types of campaigns for a QSR company, where Wurl was taking care of the exact type of content that was emotionally engaging for that consumer in that moment, and Innovid’s piece of the puzzle was assembling the creative with context around the geography, so the consumer knew where that QSR restaurant was, and we saw phenomenal results above the benchmarks that previously existed.

Tori: Well, last question for you here, Chris. Looking ahead, do you see contextual data evolving as a creative input, not just a targeting tactic? And what’s helping advertisers, in your opinion, think of creatives in this way?

Chris: I think it has to. I think a lot of effort has been put into targeting and squeezing as much data as we can, and certainly that’s going through its own evolution from on the shelf to then custom to now granular inside of AI models that you’re not even sure what the model might be choosing, but if we’re not marrying that with creative, we’re missing a big piece to the puzzle. Customers and consumers want more personalized content.

They like the relevance. Sometimes I feel like it’s not necessarily a frequency problem we have, it’s a creative problem we have. You don’t want to see the same ad multiple times, but maybe you need to see that brand a few times to think about purchasing, to think about that category a little bit more. Brands are getting there, but I think the more we can make it easier for them, the faster it will go.

Tori: Awesome, well thank you so much for your time, Chris.

Chris: Thanks for having me. Really appreciate it.