Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

We launched the ground-breaking Content Builder in August of 2022. The Content Builder was designed to solve those common problems we tend to see in many creative studios. The Otomo Content Builder provides an alternative to using HTML, Photoshop and After Effects to create static and animated content, and it’s used to make master HTML design files or to easily recreate existing assets as HTML masters.<h2>Otomo’s Content Creator</h2> Usually, we need three tools to create animated or static content. But with the Otomo Content Builder, we’ve got a single platform that lets you do it all. Otomo allows you to design static and animated content in one single platform. UI was important to us. Otomo’s content builder tool has been designed to be flexible and simple to use. It helps you do it all like resizing images, drag and drop elements such as images and text and implement all types of animation styles quickly and easily. You’re also able to export to all of the formats: static, animated and video. Animated and static content covers about 80% of the crafted content we see. For the 20% of content we see that is more creatively complex, you can simply create that content in the standard studio format, crafted by hand.<h3>Combine the power of Otomo’s Content Creator and their AI-Powered Create Automation Platform&nbsp;</h3>By uploading that content to the Otomo AI powered creative automation platform, the analysis engine will decompile your exquisitely crafted designs into an Otomo shell. This process then allows for you to use the onboarding and scaling tools to adapt and change your content simply and quickly. We’ve built the content builder tool to make sure that any studio that doesn’t have HTML capabilities actually has the power to create HTML by using design and drag and drop tools in the content builder. We are <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://otomo.io" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">otomo.io</a>. Our AI-powered lossless creative automation platform lets you create and modify digital assets in seconds at scale. Find out how Otomo can help you scale your business. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://bit.ly/3ftYZkk" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">Schedule your demo today</a>!

Using Otomo Content Builder

This is not an article about how artificial intelligence content-generation tools can create cool fun memes and images. This is about extending the power of human creativity by removing boundaries (time, cost, variation) from the creative and production process.Remember the scene in Avatar where the bad guy climbs into a robot suit and starts shadowboxing? The robot suit makes him 50 feet tall, capable of knocking down trees with a single punch, and just as light on his feet as he is in real life. That’s what we want out of creative automation (bots), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML).What if, instead of replacing the artist with bots, AI or ML, we can use these technologies to enable the same artist to paint with a thousand brushes at one time, while painting 1,000 portraits at once, all perfectly? It may seem counterintuitive, but AI and ML together might just be the two factors that will ensure that great artistry in advertising is maintained, not lost. Creative robotsThe advertising world, at the dawn of the creative robot, faces a battle. Creatives must often choose: remain committed to artistically-crafted designs, or produce variations at break-neck speeds. The creative robot removes cost barriers associated with volume and variations, allowing creatives to remain dedicated to the integrity of their craft.Removing this barrier has immediate, positive impacts on budgets and scale; you can make more ‘art’ without having to settle. The C-suite likes this.But a greater impact occurs upstream in the more conceptual part of the process where creatives live. This impact allows creatives to think differently. It begs the question: ‘If time and cost no longer rule production decisions, what could I create?’Ironically, it’s in this conceptual stage where creatives are most distrustful of software. Creatives worry that their artistry will be lost with poor and lifeless executions from software, or that their ideas will be replaced by AI.There is genuine concern about unacceptable compromises to creativity due to the limitations of these tools. Many tools out there are not good, forcing compromise through templates. Creatively discriminating readers should avoid these like long Covid. There’s also the idea that AI threatens creatives’ very existence: why hire a creative when you can have Siri do it? As chief executive of a software company that creates content, I can tell you we are very far from that threat. And, as I’ll argue, bots can supercharge our human powers. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://youtu.be/dT3WRRso5I0￼" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">https://youtu.be/dT3WRRso5I0</a> How do AI and ML help push creative boundaries?<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://youtu.be/dT3WRRso5I0￼" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download=""> </a> Let’s start with a simple application, like playing with variations on a theme to push forward the quality of ideas. In the traditional world, limited by time and costs, brands and agencies can’t just create endless scamps and visuals. That’s no longer the case. Those machine-driven capabilities that deliver downstream efficiencies when used upstream can create a lightbox of ideas: countless variations and test runs.With more complex creative applications such as programmatic technologies, machine-driven software can do more than just retrospectively assemble components based on programmatic triggers for optimized or personalized creative. During the creative process, it can greatly enhance the speed and ability to create complex routes or variations of a single creative idea, fine-tune them and see how they all relate back to the overarching campaign idea. All too often creatives are working blind; typically, volume and variation are too much to manage prior to launch. What now? It’s more important than ever for creatives to understand how tools, data and new strategies impact artistry and its effectiveness. That’s where AI, ML and automation come into play.By far the biggest impact is on creative. A 2017 Nielsen study showed that creative made up 47% of sales contribution through advertising elements. Of all the levers that go into precision marketing, creative dwarfs the rest.Creativity is timeless. Tools can super-change creativity, but once everyone has the same tools (and they will) creativity is where agencies will always have the advantage. We must not fear automation, AI and ML software, but find the right tools to enhance our creative powers, remove barriers and create space for new amazing ideas.

How creative robots will save human artistry in the agency world

Hypertext Markup Language, which you may know as HTML, is the standard language for the world wide web. HTML is the code used to structure the foundation of webpages and applications and the content on both. The way this typically works is that HTML can specify what part of the document is what. For example, it can specify which part of the document is a title. It can indicate what part is a list. It can identify the images. HTML can also be used to hyperlink text. It can italicize fonts or embed an image.The list of its capabilities goes on and on.<h2>HTML and Otomo</h2>HTML is one of the key file formats we use at Otomo. HTML is a super flexible format. It enables us to create intricate designs and animation styles. It can associate variables so they can flow together in a brand compliant fashion. We can set regulatory guidelines to make sure fonts appear at the right sizes.&nbsp; <h3>The power of Otomo and HTML together</h3> The powerful combination of Otomo and HTML is really seen when we start to export formats from the HTML based files. We can export to static PNGs, JPEGS and GIFs. We can also export to animated HTML for paid media. It’s also possible to export to MP4s and .movs. <h3>Creating the HTML files</h3>You can create the HTML files in the standard studio handcrafted way. Alternatively, you could use the content builder to create that content and push it into the scaling side of the platform to, again, use all of the adaptation tools at your disposal. We are <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://otomo.io" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">otomo.io</a>. Our AI-powered lossless creative automation platform lets you create and modify digital assets in seconds at scale. Find out how Otomo can help you scale your business. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://bit.ly/3ftYZkk" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">Schedule your demo today</a>!

Using HTML with Otomo

Precision marketing is vital to retain, cross-sell and upsell your existing customers. We got the chance to sit down with Steve Turnsek, the CEO of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://Otomo.io" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">Otomo.io</a>, to discuss precision marketing and how Otomo can help your business execute it with excellence.<h2>What is precision marketing?</h2>It’s simple. Precision marketing is creating content that creates relevance within an audience or a segment that you are targeting. The primary role precision marketing plays is to retain and revitalize your existing customers. And it’s an essential technique that drives customer loyalty.<h2>How does Otomo work with precision marketing?</h2>Otomo is a tool that creates all of the content variations you need using third party, first party, contextual or real time data.&nbsp;<h2 style="text-align: center">Otomo makes precision marketing quick and simple.</h2> By uploading your first-party data to the platform, you can create almost one-to-one personalised communication with your audience. Utilizing programmatic technologies and third-party data, Otomo can create audience-optimized content fast and effectively.&nbsp; Creating contextual-relevant content is also a really powerful tool. Using the power of real-time data, you can create hyper-relevant content.&nbsp; Examples of real-time data: <ul><li>Geolocation</li><li>Weather</li><li>Pollen</li></ul> These are all great ways to create relevance with products and messages. The more you know about your customers and their online behaviors, the more precise your targeting can be. Otomo allows for you to create multi-versioned, multi-market online ad campaigns that speak directly to your target audience, all at the click of a button. Do the impossible with lossless creative automation. Save time, budget and never lose creative performance again with Otomo’s lossless AI-powered creative automation tool. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://bit.ly/3ftYZkk" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">Schedule a demo today</a>.

Precision Marketing

Photoshop and After Effects have their place. Under certain circumstances, it’s definitely beneficial to have working knowledge of and access to those tools. But there are definitely times when working smarter, not harder, is the way to go.&nbsp; In advertising, you tend to deal with a lot of standard assets that need to be utilized and incorporated into different pieces of content. It can be daunting to rely on sophisticated design tools for content that simply needs to be assembled quickly and easily.&nbsp; Under those frequent circumstances, opting for an easy-to-use content builder is a win for both saving time and developing quality designs. <h2>Introducing the Otomo Content Builder</h2> We created the Otomo Content Builder to provide an alternative to using HTML, Photoshop and After Effects to create static and animated content.&nbsp; We launched the ground-breaking Content Builder in August of 2022. This tool is used to make master HTML design files or to easily recreate existing assets as HTML masters. Animated and static content covers about 80% of the crafted content we see. For the 20% of content we see that is more creatively complex, you can simply create that content in the standard studio format, crafted by hand. <h3>How does the Otomo Content Builder work?</h3> As we mentioned before, advertising tends to deal with a lot of standard assets that need to be incorporated into different pieces of content. So say you’re looking to create a static ad for a cologne. You have the image assets and the copy. Now, you just need to compile those elements into a quick design. That’s where the Otomo creative tool comes into play. Load in your assets and arrange as you see fit. Animate what you need. It’s as simple as that.<h3>Put Otomo’s AI creative automation platform to work</h3> By uploading that content to the Otomo AI powered creative automation platform, the analysis engine will decompile your exquisitely crafted designs into an Otomo shell. This process then allows for you to use the onboarding and scaling tools to adapt and change your content simply and quickly. Do the impossible with lossless creative automation. Save time, budget and never lose creative performance again with Otomo’s lossless AI-powered creative automation tool. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://bit.ly/3ftYZkk" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">Schedule a demo today</a>.

Otomo Content Builder

When dealing with a global marketing strategy, localisation is a key element. Localisation is basically just the process of adapting your advertising assets to your target markets. This can often include considering the languages of those markets along with the nuances and preferences of those markets as well. The purpose of localisation is to essentially reach more people. By adapting your marketing content to specific regions, adjusting the language from the one spoken by your primary audience, you open the doors to reach more people where they live and work. <h2>Understanding Localisation&nbsp;</h2>There’s two main ways you can localise content. It can be location based, so retail localisation, or it can be across countries using different languages to localise master content. The human element is the weaker part of localisation because human time costs money.&nbsp;<h3> The manual localisation process</h3> Why do we have so many steps in the manual process? Well, content needs to be created. Then it needs to be approved. Then, moving on to the next step, localised, transcreated, then approved. Then there’s the final step where you take the approved transcreated content and put it into the master templates to create local variations. <h3>Otomo’s AI-powered creative automation localisation process</h3>Using Otomo, we can take away that element and you can change the whole process. Simply take the transcreated content, put it straight into the master set and allow the client to review that content in the native program for the first time.&nbsp; Local content has to be culturally relevant, otherwise it won’t be adopted. But central wants the brand compliance and consistency to be there, so why not have the best of both worlds. Distribute the content through the Otomo platform, manage the brand controls, lock them away, allow access to all of the content so culturally relevant changes can be made by each local market. Using Otomo to streamline the localisation process not only takes the pain out of the process, but it allows for you to use much richer content that you wouldn’t normally think of using. Do the impossible with lossless creative automation. Save time, budget and never lose creative performance again with Otomo’s lossless AI-powered creative automation tool. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://bit.ly/3ftYZkk" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">Schedule a demo today</a>.

Localising content with Otomo

It’s understandable that you might be wondering how, exactly, Otomo works. And more importantly, how it’ll work for you. Creative automation tools serve to simplify the process of targeting and scaling. So it’s vital that our AI-powered creative automation tool produces exactly what you need, exactly how you need it.<h2>What is creative automation?</h2>Creative automation is a software that is typically used by marketing and creative professionals to systemize those time-consuming but necessary repetitive design tasks in advertising campaigns.<h3>So, how does Otomo work?</h3>You bring the assets, we bring the AI to create the shell. Whatever you’re working with, emails, videos, content for social, landing pages, brand kits, campaigns, etc, just upload the files into our cloud. Otomo’s AI engine then scans the file and makes a master shell and custom content board for each asset. This allows you to upload anything into the master shell with zero restrictions, and it doesn’t require any specialized skill.<h3>Importing and Exporting files in Otomo</h3>Understandably, a lot of people ask us about formats and our automation platform. We’ve designed it to use most of the common tools that you would see in any creative studio. For upload purposes, that means HTML, Photoshop files and After Effects. For export and points of activation, that includes things like JPEGs, GIFs, animated GIFs, PNGs and animated or static HTML and After Effects video.&nbsp; We’ve also designed our AI-powered creative automation platform to use Excel and CSV files because these are commonly used tools in most studios for creating media schedules and configuration sheets for more scaled production.<h3>Otomo and you</h3>Stephen Turnsek, founder of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://Otomo.io" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">Otomo.io</a>, says that the root and the reason behind Otomo is to bring great creativity to life. And ultimately, the common limiting factor to delivering great creativity consistently is process. Otomo was designed to help your creative teams focus on the best part of the user journey, the most creative pieces of work while those time-consuming, foundational and repetitive tasks are taken care of with the push of a button. Do the impossible with lossless creative automation. Save time, budget and never lose creative performance again with Otomo’s lossless AI-powered creative automation tool. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://bit.ly/3ftYZkk" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">Schedule a demo today</a>.

Importing and Exporting in Otomo

Brand consistency and compliance is a really hot topic. A brand’s identity is made up entirely of various components that, when compiled all together, tell a cohesive story. Consistency is crucial especially when it comes to establishing brand recognition.&nbsp; Brand recognition is key to becoming a household name. There are some brands that have such solid brand recognition that their name is now synonymous with the actual product itself, even if there are countless variations of it.<h2>What’s the point of brand consistency and brand compliance?</h2>How do you establish brand recognition? Well, you adhere completely to your company’s strategic brand guide. This can be tough to do when there are a number of hands touching your company’s marketing. Though these guidelines have been properly communicated, human error is inevitable. Deviating from a brand’s established identity may not seem like the end of the world. But consistency is built over time. It’s how your customer gets to know your business, and, most importantly, grows to trust your business.<h3>Establish and maintain brand recognition with Otomo.</h3> Using templates with rules based and regulatory guidelines built-in makes the whole job of creating and adapting content much easier. Part of Otomo’s unique analysis engine also allows for you to decide which variables you expose along the workflow process. Otomo takes your templates and allows you to create brand controls within those to make sure that creating and adapting content is not only easy but also brand compliant. Otomo’s workflow is designed not only to protect your creative but to also preserve your brand guidelines. This tool allows for your marketing team to stretch and play imaginatively within the safe parameters of your set brand controls.<h3>Import bespoke content into Otomo</h3>Once your bespoke content is in the Otomo platform, you can distribute that content in a brand compliant fashion through the platform. Any content variable can be exposed to the user or, alternatively, these can be hidden from the user to make sure things like logos, safe areas and other brand elements are locked away for brand compliance and safety.&nbsp; Do the impossible with lossless creative automation. Save time, budget and never lose creative performance again with Otomo’s lossless AI-powered creative automation tool. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://bit.ly/3ftYZkk" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">Schedule a demo today</a>.

Brand Compliance

Recently, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/terry-pigott-07a1b55?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_miniProfile%3AACoAAADrOR4Bu0P3uMosYo2dSPJ0qNurZ1yB7mU" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">Terry Pigott</a>, the head of product at <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://Otomo.io" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">Otomo.io</a>, sat down to share with us how Otomo began and where it has evolved.Terry shared, "When Otomo started everything was Flash. In those days, we built the system to handle Flash files. But then, I think it was five or six years ago, Google stopped supporting Flash. So obviously every banner in Flash wasn't going to play on the Google platforms and browsers, so that's when HTML5 became the standard approach to build advertising banners."<h2>Otomo was then updated to be able to handle HTML5.</h2>HTML5 also gives a lot of flexibility around the type of outputs we can get from it. So it can be animated, we can produce the static banners or static images from HTML5, it gives us a load of flexibility around the look and feel and we can also produce mp4s from an HTML5 master. In Essence, HTML5 gives us the most flexibility.<h2>Working in HTML5 even gives us more flexibility than Photoshop.</h2>With Photoshop you can target copy, you can target an image, you can do font size, font color, alignment of input text left and right, but that's it. With HTML5, if we move a headline from two lines to three lines, the subtext will automatically be pushed down. We have a lot more control over the positioning of elements within a master asset that helps us to make variable assets, when we localize or customize any outputs, that positioning just makes it a lot easier. In Photoshop, it's pretty well locked down.All that being said, every campaign is looked at individually and we ask ourselves, "What's the best solution for this?" For example, if we are building an animated GIF and just changing one piece of copy, or a postal address or something very simple, it could be that Photoshop is going to be the way. But once we start looking at the variations and it starts looking like we need to be able to control the position, and if the amount of content that needs to go in can be variable, then you need something that's more flexible, and that's HTML5.So HTML5 just gives us this complete flexibility and we can literally build in any type of controls, any type of variables to allow the master shell to react in different ways to whatever content you feed into it. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://meetings-eu1.hubspot.com/jhewson/otomo-demo" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">Schedule a demo with Otomo</a> today to learn more.

The Power of HTML Masters

<h3 style="text-align: start">The Purpose of Otomo</h3><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-turnsek-25b8a510?miniProfileUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_miniProfile%3AACoAAAJEbScBKGA__cO0PtdhEMseqsxONKufMHg" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">Stephen Turnsek</a>, founder of <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://Otomo.io" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">Otomo.io</a> says that the root and the reason behind Otomo is to bring great creativity to life. And one of the main factors limiting the ability to deliver great creativity consistently is process - especially cumbersome processes in producing creative work. There are certain elements related to technology that form the foundation of the creative process - we create, review, share, amend and distribute creative works.&nbsp;Within that flow are repetitive tasks, that if they are not done properly can ruin the creative work completely.&nbsp;But to do these tasks properly takes up a large amount of time and effort. If we can take away the time and effort spent on the repetitive tasks, with the same level of quality, we can be more creative and thus better.&nbsp;<h3 style="text-align: start">Otomo is the start of a bigger vision.&nbsp;</h3>We want to create a world where the focus for our teams is on making the best part of the user journey, the most creative piece of work, where those time consuming yet foundational and repetitive tasks can be done with something as simple as the push of a button. Budgets have massively changed.&nbsp;There is tremendous pressure on internal and external teams to deliver faster, with more robust results that, of course, have KPIs.&nbsp;We demand that.&nbsp;So instead of overly spending time doing the same process repeatedly, Otomo’s purpose is to allow us to focus our energy, our budgets, and effort, on doing things worth doing.&nbsp;<h3 style="text-align: start">Otomo takes care of the rest.</h3>Contact us today to <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://meetings-eu1.hubspot.com/jhewson/otomo-demo" tt-mode="url" class="" title="" download="">schedule your demo</a> and learn more about how to do the impossible with lossless creative automation.

Keep up to date with the latest news and helpful articles about how to use Otomo

Using Otomo Content Builder

How creative robots will save human artistry in the agency world

Using HTML with Otomo

Precision Marketing

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