RevJet launches a ‘creative operating system’ with point solutions as installable apps

In 2015, RevJet launched its Creative Side Platform (CSP) for creating and testing online ad variations at scale.

Today, the San Carlos, California-based company is launching another approach, one that it says took a decade of development. Called Orora, it is what RevJet describes as the “first Operating System and App Ecosystem purpose-built to power every marketing creative use case.”

While the CSP is still available to existing customers, its functions — and its role as the company’s main product — are now available as Orora and its AppXchange.

Although CEO Mitchell Weisman compares Orora to the launch of the iPhone’s iOS and its app ecosystem, RevJet’s product is not literally an operating system, which is generally considered to be the software that governs a physical device’s basic functions and peripherals.

Rather, Orora is a browser-accessed cloud-based desktop and mobile platform of back-end systems that include a dynamic content delivery engine, an audience targeting engine, optimization of creative assets, a lookalike engine and a neural net learning engine.

Through API connections, apps in the AppXchange can access Orora functionalities when users install the apps in RevJet. Those applications offer point solutions for personalization of ads, creative optimization, digital asset management, creative workflow, data visualization, ad serving, multivariate testing, scheduling, reporting and other uses, and they are added to Orora though a quick and easy installation process that resembles downloading and opening a mobile app.

Here’s the Personalizer application while still in the AppXchange, before it’s installed:

Here’s the Personalizer application, installed and opened:

And here’s a screen shot of the Display Builder application, also installed and open:

At launch, there are 45 of these Orora-intended applications, some in bundles. All have been developed by RevJet and are offered at no additional charge beyond the platform’s subscriber fee. There are also connectors for working with existing tools, like DoubleClick.

Weisman said his company expects third-party vendors to add additional applications, which he said can be developed with 60 to 90 percent less coding time than comparable applications because they call upon existing Orora functionalities. At launch, no third-party vendors were announced.

Each of the applications has its own user interface, although RevJet says it is developing a style guide so the UIs can be consistent. The initial 45 applications — all created by RevJet — have a similar look and feel.

I asked Weisman why Orora isn’t designed as a platform of core applications, made extensible by an app exchange and connections to other tools. He said that setting up basic functions in background and making key solutions available as discrete applications that can be added and deleted makes the platform “future-proof,” and it allows a marketer to utilize — and pay for — only the functions needed.

And this ability to cherry-pick the capabilities, he said, has resulted in a 50 percent performance boost in ad impressions for test clients like Franklin Templeton Investments.