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Creative Studio End-to-End How-To Guide

Creative Studio: End-to-End How‑To Guide

This practical guide walks you through Creative Studio’s core workflow: from creating your first template & connecting data feeds, to creating variants, generating previews, routing approvals, and rendering final assets.

What you’ll accomplish

  • Configure a creative template

  • Connect supplemental data feeds (products, locations, promos)

  • Create and edit creative variants

  • Generate previews for QA, share for review, and track approvals

  • Deliver creatives to destinations or export as needed

Terminology: “Template” refers to a reusable creative wireframe (HTML or compatible format). “Variant” refers to a specific creative generated by applying inputs (copy, images, feed rows).

Before You Start: Requirements

  • Brand inputs available (logos, color codes, and brand copy guidelines). If your brand uses themes, confirm theme groupings (e.g., Light, Seasonal, Sale).

  • Template source files ready (e.g., Google Web Designer editable files and published files).

  • [Optional] Data feeds connected or accessible (Product feeds, supplemental feeds for offers, locations, inventory). Align column names to the standardized schema when possible.

Step 1: Access Creative Studio

Navigate in Alli: Side navigation → Creative → Creative Studio. You’ll land on the Creative Studio homepage, where you can browse existing templates or create new ones.

Step 2: Add or Select a Template

You can upload a new template or start from an approved creative blueprint.

  1. Choose Screenshot 2025-12-22 at 12.01.01 PM.png

  2. Provide a clear name and description (Tip: include channel/placement type: e.g., Meta feed, display banner).

  3. Select channel type

  4. Upload editable template files from the GWD published package.

  5. Select sizes: select sizes from the list of available creative dimensions in the template file.

If your team migrated from Dynamic+, replicate the familiar column bindings to minimize retraining and reduce mapping errors.

Step 2: Connect Data Feeds [Optional]

Creative Studio works with standardized inputs and feed-based inputs. Connecting feeds unlocks at-scale variant generation and management.

  1. Under Data Feed, select a Supplemental Feed type. There are two ways to connect data in Creative Studio:

    1. Use an existing Alli Data Source: Allows you to connect to data sources in the Alli platform such as product feeds, audience personas, or custom data sources.

    2. Upload a supplemental feed file: Allows you to upload your own data in Creative Studio. This option should only be used for use cases where supplemental data will not change.

  2. Connect your supplemental feed (e.g., product, hotel, flight, geolocation). Verify access and freshness.

  3. Set up your column mappings to your Creative Studio template schema.

  4. When you’ve finished setting up your template, select Screenshot 2025-12-22 at 12.03.33 PM.png & you’re ready to start generating variants!

Schema tip: Not all columns need to be mapped. Only map columns you want to pull from supplemental feeds. (e.g. product_image → image_1)

Step 5: Variants & Previews

Quickly generate new variants of your creative template & check previews in real time for creative QA.

  1. Create a new variant by selecting Screenshot 2025-12-22 at 11.59.52 AM.png or Screenshot 2025-12-22 at 12.00.21 PM.png to duplicate the default creative.

    1. A default creative is added when a template file is uploaded to Creative Studio. This will be used as a backup creative on some channels when dynamic data is not available.

  2. Add your content (copy, image links, logos, etc.) to the columns in the variant table

  3. Previews will automatically appear on the left side of the Creative Studio builder when changes are made to the variant table. To view a preview of a particular size, use the size selector to switch between sizes.

    Screenshot 2025-12-22 at 11.59.30 AM.png

  4. To view a preview in a full-size view, select the expand preview button Screenshot 2025-12-22 at 12.06.33 PM.png . This will open up a larger window with your creative preview.

  5. Once all changes are finished and you have QA’d the creatives, hit Screenshot 2025-12-22 at 12.07.42 PM.png & the changes will be published to the template file.

Unsaved changes: Changes will only be published once a user selects the save button above the variant table.

  1. If you need to delete a variant, select the variant you want to discard and select Screenshot 2025-12-22 at 12.09.46 PM.png

Bulk changes: to edit multiple variants at once, select the checkbox next to the variants you want to make bulk changes to.

Step 6: Share for Review and Capture Approvals

Route previews to internal or client reviewers directly from Creative Studio. Keep the full approval trail centralized.

  1. Navigate to the approval view by navigating to Screenshot 2025-12-22 at 12.12.22 PM.png .

  2. To view a specific variant for approval select a variant from the variant list on the left side menu.

  3. Share the preview using the Screenshot 2025-12-22 at 12.19.01 PM.png button & send to your approval stakeholder for review.

  4. Stakeholders will be directed to the variant to review. Review multiple sizes of the creative variant by panning around the preview canvas.

  5. When a variant is ready to approve or reject, select the checkbox next to the variant name in the left side menu & select either one of the reviewer actions. To approve or reject multiple variants at once use the Select All action, or select the variants using their checkboxes.

    Screenshot 2025-12-22 at 12.21.35 PM.png

  6. Capture approval and review feedback by opening the Activity Feed to share recommended edits & other feedback.

    Screenshot 2025-12-22 at 12.26.22 PM.png

Approval Status: The approval status will automatically publish to the template & appear in the variant table in the editor to signal if edits are required.

Screenshot 2025-12-22 at 12.24.02 PM.png

Step 7: Rendering Creatives

Rendering creatives saves the template preview files as final creatives for delivery to media destinations.

Only creatives that have been approved will be rendered. Creatives marked rejected or pending approval will be ignored by Creative Studio until approved.

  1. In the Creative Studio editor select Render Creatives in the top right

  2. Screenshot 2026-02-24 at 1.56.19 PM.png

    Creative Studio allows you to render creatives using to methods:

    1. Scheduled: Schedule renders automatically update creatives on a recurring schedule as new creative data becomes available.

    2. On-off: Triggers an immediate render of the selected variants from your template.

  3. Select Render Creatives in the render modal

  4. Navigate to the Render & Delivery tab to view the status of your creative renders. Small batches of creatives will render in a few minutes while large feeds can take a longer period to process.

  5. When all creatives have completed, the Rendered column will reflect the number of rendered variants & the Last Rendered column will show the last day/time a render was triggered.

If a render schedule is configured for your template, the Next Render column will reflect the next day/time a render is scheduled to run.

Screenshot 2026-02-24 at 2.04.23 PM.png

Step 8: Downloading Creatives

Once creatives have been fully rendered and processed, you can now access the creatives for download.

  1. To initiate a download in Creative Studio, select the download icon on the right-hand side of the template you want to download from.

  2. Select the variant(s) you wish to download creatives from

  3. Click Download

  4. Creative Studio will export a CSV with links & metadata to access your creative files

Troubleshooting

If a preview fails to render, check mappings first: the most common cause is a mismatched or renamed feed column.

  • Feeds connected but data missing in previews: Verify filters; confirm join keys for supplemental feeds; test with a single known-good row.

  • Images not loading: Confirm asset URLs resolve and that fallback imagery is configured in Brand Inputs or template defaults.

  • Copy overflow/truncation: Adjust max-length or enable auto-fit in the template; consider shorter CTA variants.