Scaling Creative Through Systems
• Cross-brand & cross-market alignment
• Template & framework development
• Creative production oversight
• Performance optimization & quality assurance
• Team enablement & stakeholder collaboration
• Channel's Best Practices
About
Creative production across Expedia Group was fragmented, spanning multiple brands, markets, agencies, and stakeholders. The lack of a shared system created inefficiencies, duplicated work, and inconsistent output.
The Creative Hub was developed to streamline how creative assets were planned, produced, and adapted across brands, channels and markets. By combining platform guidelines, content frameworks, and production best practices in one centralized system, teams were able to create scalable campaigns while maintaining brand consistency and performance standards.
These are Dynamic HTML5 Display ads with the guidance for content production at scale pulling content from a feed, showing the dynamic elements, how the creatives are visually, how many characters can fit in each creative/frame. These visuals are displayed inside the Creative Hub and also in each Brand Content Matrix for Production reference.
Problem
Global campaigns required hundreds of creative variations across multiple platforms and markets.
Without a centralized reference system, teams faced challenges such as:
• Inconsistent asset specifications across platforms
• Inefficient briefing and production processes
• Duplicated work across regions
• Slower campaign deployment
Strategy
Build a centralized creative operating system as a strategic foundation that translated data and media insights into clear, scalable creative guidance for production across brands, channels, global markets and agencies while improving speed, consistency, and performance. By bringing together platform guidelines, brand standards, and performance insights into one centralized resource, it enabled teams to plan and produce creative more efficiently while ensuring consistency, relevance, and alignment with campaign objectives.
Execution
Creative Hub & Demand Capture Creative Bible
• Built a central Creative Hub used by internal teams and external agencies
• Created the Demand Capture Creative Bible and automation-ready Content Matrix covering:
○ Channel best practices, specs, and production guidance
○ Creative frameworks for transactional channels (YouTube, Meta, Google, TikTok)
○ App-focused channels (Meta MAI, UAC, ASO, TikTok)
○ Programmatic photography guidance aligned with media delivery
Scalable Templates & Enablement
• Introduced modular creative templates defining:
○ Visual hierarchy, character limits, and frame timing
○ Video and animation mockups for preview and approval
• Led workshops and insight sessions to translate performance data into actionable creative briefs
• Managed end-to-end production and agency onboarding across markets
Visual example how a Content Matrix for Brand Expedia, Programmatic Dynamic Display looks like (very similar to the Dynamic Feed).
Channel overview pages featuring creatives visually displayed within each platform, covering channel purpose, campaign goals and objectives, ad placements, targeting approach, creative variations, and bidding strategy.
PPT, Keynote and Internal EG Confluence Page
Results
• Consistent, high-performing creative across paid channels
• Faster production timelines and reduced execution issues
• Significant time and cost savings across internal teams and agencies
• Stronger alignment between creative output and media performance (engagement, iROAS)
• Scalable frameworks enabled rapid asset production across markets without compromising brand consistency
Impact
• Proved that well-designed creative systems save time and money while improving performance
• Enabled teams and agencies to work smarter, faster, and more consistently
• Established a long-term creative foundation used across brands, channels, and markets
Channel's Specs
- Creative copy character limit
- Channel copy
- Ratios / Sizes
- Ad Formats
- Durations (lengths)
- Technical Requirements
- Trafficking time
Creative Safe Zones
Use across all screens, formats & campaign types.
Overlays, CTAs, and buttons appear in different places depending on the format, campaign type, and screen. Safe areas to ensure that critical elements like logo, product, supers, etc. fall within these areas to avoid risk of elements being covered on certain inventory
Channel Best Practices
An overview of the recommendations, best practices and learnings to apply on each creative.
Covering all aspects of the creative: Elements, content, design, animation, layout, copy/message... And a link to a more detailed Best Practices doc
Live/Current Creatives
Live documentation where everyone can see what is current live for each brand on each channel.
Examples of a Dynamic Videos for Vrbo and Hotels.com, where all creative elements are dynamic and easily interchangeable: imagery, copy, logo, CTA, and colour palette. The template also displays the duration of each frame and its start time, giving content producers and copywriters a clear reference for how long each element is visible to the user.
Additional examples of creative content guidance showing the intended direction for asset production and post-production, including placement, presentation, and the way creative and copy are displayed across formats.