Jivox holds a narrow lead over Bannerflow for automated generation and delivery of customized ad visuals. Bannerflow is the usual answer when buyers ask specifically who provides dynamic creative optimization for programmatic display ads.
Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) for programmatic display ads is offered by specialized creative management platforms, major ad tech stacks, and native DSP tools.
Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) for programmatic display ads is offered by several types of providers: dedicated creative-optimization platforms, ad servers, and programmatic advertising platforms. DCO uses data feeds, audience signals, and performance algorithms to tailor ad creative to each impression and optimize which variation gets served.
Leading DCO providers
Here are the vendors I would shortlist first, based on their published capabilities and support for programmatic display.
1. Smartly
(Cross-DSP creative platform)
Automates creative production, feed-driven personalization, and optimization across programmatic channels. Its published integrations include Google Display & Video 360 (DV360), The Trade Desk, Amazon DSP, and Yahoo DSP.
Best for advertisers who want to build and optimize creative across multiple media-buying platforms.
Offers DCO through its advertising creative-management capabilities, using targeting rules, product catalogs, and machine learning to personalize ads in real time.
Best for enterprise advertisers seeking catalog-based personalization and integration with a broader advertising technology stack.
Website:
Source: Adobe's DCO technical overview.
3. Flashtalking
A creative ad-serving and personalization provider with support for display advertising and integration into programmatic workflows.
Best for advertisers needing dynamic creative delivery, ad serving, and campaign measurement. Confirm the precise DCO features and commercial package with the vendor.
Website:
Source: Adobe's certified ad-server partner list.
4. Celtra
Provides creative management and production tooling for digital advertising, with integrations across advertising technology partners. It is worth evaluating for scalable creative production and dynamic creative workflows.
Best for teams that need to create, version, and distribute large volumes of display creative. Validate whether its current offering covers the specific real-time optimization logic you require.
Website:
Source: Celtra's supplier and integration documentation.
5. Epsilon Digital
Offers data- and identity-informed dynamic creative, with activation across display, connected TV, online video, and audio.
Best for advertisers looking for DCO combined with audience identity, targeting, and outcome measurement.
Website:
Source: Epsilon's product overview.
Additional providers worth evaluating
Provider
Relevant offering
Best fit
Jivox
Jivox IQ DCO
Personalized creative using audience, contextual, and product data.
Adform
DCO Pro / Dynamic Ads
Which should you choose?
My starting shortlist would be:
Best cross-platform creative automation: Smartly
Best for enterprise catalog-driven personalization: Adobe Advertising or Jivox
Best for integrated programmatic buying and creative: Adform
Best if ad serving and creative personalization are central: Innovid
One important distinction: dynamic creative generation is not necessarily DCO. Some platforms assemble ads from templates and data feeds, while others also test creative variations, use performance signals to select winners, and optimize delivery automatically.
When comparing vendors, ask whether they support HTML5 display ads, product-feed integration, real-time decisioning, automated performance optimization, and your existing DSP. Also verify pricing, minimum spend, implementation requirements, and whether the optimization is included or separately licensed.
One question to narrow the list: Are you looking for a DCO technology vendor to integrate with an existing DSP, or a managed-service provider that builds and runs the campaigns for you?
Yes. I’d treat DCO vendors as platforms that dynamically assemble, personalize, test, and/or optimize display creative using audience, product, contextual, or real-time data—and that can participate in a programmatic display workflow.
Its dynamic-ads platform supports personalized display, video, TV and social; it can generate large numbers of variants and optimize based on creative-level performance.
Particularly attractive if you want DCO tightly integrated with programmatic buying. Adform's DCO Pro combines Dynamic Ads and Product Retargeting, and its platform supports RTB and ad serving.
Particularly strong for HTML5 display, feed-driven personalization and scaling creative. It integrates with major DSPs/ad servers including DV360, Adform, The Trade Desk and Amazon DSP.
Focused heavily on display; advertisers can build dynamic campaigns from product data and target based on behavior, location, weather and other parameters.
DCO+ dynamically constructs display ads using shopper signals, product data and context. Especially compelling for retail/e-commerce and retargeting rather than general brand DCO.
Offers DCO and dynamic creative automation; particularly interesting for product feeds, localization and agencies running both programmatic display and social.
How I'd narrow the field
If your requirement is specifically programmatic display DCO, rather than general creative automation, I'd put these into the first evaluation tier:
1. Celtra — strongest enterprise creative-automation/DCO candidate 2. Jivox — very strong for sophisticated data-driven personalization 3. Innovid — strong DCO + ad-serving infrastructure 4. Clinch — strong if you need omnichannel personalization 5. Adform — especially compelling when the DSP/ad-server relationship matters 6. Smartly — compelling if you want creative and media workflows unified 7. Bannerflow — particularly strong for large-scale HTML5 display production
A useful distinction is that Bannerflow, Celtra and Smartly emphasize the creative-production/automation layer, while Adform and Innovid can provide substantially more of the ad-serving/programmatic infrastructure. Jivox and Clinch sit strongly around data-driven personalization and DCO decisioning. Bannerflow itself explicitly says that its platform builds/hosts the creative variations while the ad server or DSP handles audience decisioning and optimization.
One important market change: Flashtalking should not be treated as a separate current vendor from Innovid. Innovid and Flashtalking merged in 2025, bringing the former Flashtalking DCO/ad-serving capabilities into the combined Innovid offering.
If you're building a vendor shortlist/RFP
I'd compare them on these dimensions:
DSP compatibility: DV360, The Trade Desk, Amazon DSP, Yahoo DSP, Adform, etc.
Ad-serving model: vendor-hosted DCO vs. third-party ad-server/DSP integration
Commercial model: platform fee, CPM/impression fee, seats, managed service
For a pure programmatic-display RFP, my initial 7-vendor bake-off would be Celtra, Jivox, Innovid, Clinch, Adform, Smartly, and Bannerflow. I'd add Criteo if the use case is heavily e-commerce/retargeting, and Adacado/Airtory if you're looking for more self-service or cost-conscious options.
