Explainer Animation - OneTag

The Brief

We worked with Onetag, a global leader in AI-powered programmatic advertising, to create an explainer animation breaking down their technology offering in the programmatic advertising world. While the technology itself is highly sophisticated, the challenge was to communicate its value clearly and confidently to a broad programmatic audience.

Our challenge was to distil this complex journey into something clear, engaging and easy to grasp. Onetag wanted to show how their Smart Curation Platform works, why it matters, and how it delivers meaningful value to both buyers and publishers. The film also needed to reposition supply-side decisioning as an active, intelligent process that drives performance, rather than something that operates quietly in the background.

From the outset, two ideas shaped our creative approach: scale and speed. These concepts influenced everything from the storytelling to the visual design. Through careful storyboarding and considered style frames, we focused on creating an animation that made the technology feel fast, powerful and built for scale, helping viewers quickly understand both the system itself and what sets Onetag apart from competitors.

Our Response

We start the animation by showing ad impressions moving through a cluttered and unfocused ecosystem. Visually, this world feels busy and overwhelming, with high-quality and low-quality ads mixed together in a confusing flow that lacks clarity or control.

As Onetag’s Smart Curation Platform is introduced, this flow is brought into order. We reveal a clear diagram of the ad impression journey, showing impressions passing through a series of funnels and curation layers. Each stage is carefully labelled, making the process easy to follow while reinforcing the intelligence behind every decision. The system feels deliberate, fast and controlled, clearly demonstrating how Smart Curation operates and how it delivers value within the programmatic supply chain.

To communicate performance and scale, we leaned into bold, dark environments with glowing accents that suggest power and advanced technology. Though initially exploring a 2D approach, we settled on a faux 3D approach in key moments to create depth and a sense of digital infrastructure. This added dimensionality helped convey the vastness of the system and gave the film a premium, large-scale feel that matched the ambition of the technology.
Scale and speed were further emphasised through the way ad impressions were visualised. Individual impressions appear as small dots, clearly visible at first. As we move deeper into the system and zoom out, they accelerate and compress into fast-moving streams. At peak scale, the volume becomes so great that individual impressions are no longer distinguishable, leaving only the flow and momentum of the system. This visual progression communicates the sheer volume the Smart Curation Platform is capable of handling, all happening near instantly.

Throughout the animation, we move fluidly between wide, system-level views and close-up moments that show what happens to a single impression as it is curated. Clean motion, simple shapes and focused visuals keep attention on the funnelling process itself. The result is a clear, confident explainer that positions the Smart Curation Platform as a powerful engine delivering better performance for buyers and higher value for publishers, all at speed and at scale.

Style Development

Storyboard Development

Animation Snapshots

Final Animation

What our client Said

“Producing our first ever animated video was a scary proposition and uncharted territory for us as an agency. Working with The Animation Guys they put us at ease, listened to our ideas and made the process come to life. They’re genuinely decent, honest and hard-working people that ultimately produce first-class animation videos. We couldn’t be happier with our final product and no doubt will return to them for a follow up video at some point! Fully recommend.”

Beth Hellowell

Managing Partner @ Signify Digital