83.5% of marketers believe that creativity is the key to advertising performance, but only 58.5% of respondents agree within their team on exactly what good creative is. That's according to a new survey by eMarketer and TripleLift, which polled 164 marketers operating in the US.
"True creative excellence is still elusive because we lack a common language and metrics," says TripleLift's Toccara Baker, adding: "Each company has its own definition, and despite efforts to establish industry standards, widespread adoption has been slow."
Good creative is most often defined in the eyes of the marketers surveyed (69.5%) by storytelling that communicates the brand very clearly, as well as visually appealing design. Personalisation and relevance (66.5%) or memorable call-to-action (58.5%) also play an important role.
Shortcomings often stem from the way creative is handled. More than half of marketers (54.3%) admitted that they don't refresh their campaign visuals often enough, leading to audience fatigue and reduced effectiveness. As many as 51.8% of respondents do not prepare enough variations within a campaign to reach diverse audiences, contexts or formats. A single format is relied upon by 43.9% of respondents, reducing the effectiveness of the ad and its performance. The same proportion of respondents do not have enough resources or people to test and produce.
For nearly three-quarters of marketers (71.3%), evaluating the effectiveness of creative is more important than it used to be. Despite this, however, only 58.5% link their creative to performance and over half (51.2%) lack reliable metrics. Meanwhile, CTR (67.1%), engagement rate (59.8%) and conversion rate (57.3%) are the most commonly tracked.
Marketers are increasingly incorporating AI into the creative process. Half of them use it for copywriting and 37.8% use it to generate images or videos. In the future, they would prefer to leave format adaptation, A/B testing or proofreading to AI.
Source: mediaguru.cz