Creative is a strong performance lever.
In fact, ad creative is responsible for nearly half of sales lift, which is more than reach, recency and targeting combined, according to recent data from AI-powered creative analytics platform CreativeX.
So why doesn’t ad creative get the credit it deserves?
Until recently, technology wasn’t advanced enough to measure creative decisions at scale. But that’s changing, says Anastasia Leng, CEO and founder of CreativeX, on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
There was a time before programmatic when humans were responsible for media and targeting. Eventually, the tech got better, and “we started to trust it to give us signals to help us make those kinds of decisions,” Leng says.
“Creative is just that last element where technology fell behind for a long time,” she says. “But largely thanks to advancements in things like computer vision, we can now see in a way that we couldn’t before.”
Creative data comes from the structured, objective measurement of the various parts of an ad, everything from the logo placement and text overlays to who’s been cast in the ad and the emotional impact of the message.
Historically, creative – the big idea – was treated almost purely as an art form. But using AI to analyze, quantify and extract the components that make up an ad opens new avenues for optimization.
“Where things get really interesting is when you take that data and start to cluster it into themes that marketers can use to make decisions,” Leng says.
Of course, not everyone is ready to infuse data into the creative process, she says. The knee-jerk fear is that “machines will tell me what to create” or “machines will take my job.”
“We don’t believe creative data should replace the big idea [or] the people who are coming up with the big ideas,” Leng says. “We see it as an enabler to scale those big creative ideas in a way that will help you maximize their impact on performance.”
Also in this episode: Why diversity and representation are good for ROI, dealing with unconscious bias in marketing, Leng’s path to entrepreneurship and her Gwyneth Paltrow connection.
Plus: Why DEI shouldn’t be a political or controversial issue. “It’s about really understanding who your audience is, what they care about, and can you speak to them in a way that will cut through,” Leng says.
For more articles featuring Anastasia Leng, click here.
