We Obsessively Measure Media—But Creative Drives Performance.

The advertising industry is built on two pillars: media and creative. Media is a well-oiled machine, meticulously tracked and optimized, dissected into data points that promise marketers the illusion of precision. The creative is something else entirely—an amorphous force, difficult to measure but usually the defining factor of a campaign's success. Research suggests that nearly fifty percent of advertising performance hinges on creative quality. Yet, the industry remains stubbornly fixated on media simply because media is easier to measure.

Marketing suffers from a striking imbalance. While companies pour resources into precise audience segmentation and bid management, creative development frequently relies on intuition and groupthink. The truth is that creative impact is difficult to quantify, and without the right tools, it remains a mystery. But it is a mystery worth solving because the brands that master creativity do not just outperform their competitors—they define their categories.

The Forgotten Art of Advertising

Advertising has always been about the battle between storytelling and science. The Mad Men era revered creative genius—work was judged not just by its ability to sell but by its craft. Some of the most iconic campaigns in history—Volkswagen's "Think Small," Apple's "1984," and Nike's "Just Do It"—owe their success to their creative brilliance. They were bold. They understood culture. They were, in their own way, art.

But then, something changed. As digital media took over, the focus shifted from making people feel something to making them click something. Marketers began to believe they could data their way to success, reducing advertising effectiveness to a spreadsheet exercise. The result? An industry flooded with formulaic content—ads optimized for immediate performance but lacking in long-term resonance.

Les Binet and Peter Field, the godfathers of marketing effectiveness, have studied this phenomenon extensively. Their research, drawn from decades of IPA data, shows that creative campaigns outperform non-creative ones by a staggering margin. "Creativity is the most powerful weapon we have in our arsenal," Binet notes. "Campaigns that are highly creative are significantly more efficient at generating long-term business effects." The data backs him up. Highly creative campaigns are 11x more effective at driving market share growth than their more pedestrian counterparts. Yet, despite this overwhelming evidence, creativity remains undervalued, an afterthought in a world of performance marketing.

The Measurement Dilemma: Creative and Media Must Be Measured Together

If creative quality is so important, why does the industry struggle to measure it effectively? The challenge lies in its interdependence with media. While creative and media have traditionally been measured in isolation, their true impact emerges only when analyzed together.

A recent report from Madison & Wall, commissioned by Adobe, reinforces this point. The study, a meta-analysis of various industry research, found that creative is often more impactful than media in driving business outcomes. However, the key takeaway is not simply that creative matters but that marketers must measure creative and media as a unified system rather than in silos. The report cites a 2023 NCS study, which determined that creative drives 49% of incremental sales, while media—encompassing targeting, reach, and recency—accounts for 30%. Similarly, a 2023 Magna and Yahoo report found creative responsible for 56% of purchase intent, while media accounted for 44%. This reinforces the idea that measuring media success without factoring in creative leads to incomplete and often misleading conclusions.

Despite these findings, many marketers continue to allocate budgets and assess performance in a way that treats creative and media as separate variables. The Madison & Wall report emphasizes that the historical divide between creative and media functions often results in creative being underfunded relative to media, simply because media is easier to quantify. It suggests that "marketers who resource both together rather than in isolation are likely better able to optimize spending between these functions."

The False Comfort of Media Metrics

Because creativity is difficult to measure, advertisers have defaulted to media metrics. Click-through rates, impressions, engagement scores—these numbers provide a comforting sense of control. But there is a problem: optimizing for clicks does not mean optimizing for effectiveness.

Digital platforms, in their quest to maximize engagement, have built algorithms that favor quick hits over deep impact. Social media ads are now designed to stop thumbs, not to tell stories. The emphasis on short-term performance has led to a proliferation of disposable content—ads engineered for instant gratification but utterly forgettable. In the process, many brands have abandoned the kind of work that actually builds lasting value.

This is not just an aesthetic problem; it is a business problem. A McKinsey study found that companies that invest in creative excellence outperform their peers in revenue growth by up to thirty percent. The IPA Effectiveness Awards reinforce this, showing that creatively awarded campaigns generate more than twice the return on investment of non-awarded ones. Creativity is not just a nice-to-have—it is a competitive advantage. And yet, in the age of hyper-targeted media buys, it is too often treated as an expendable variable.

The Industry's Awakening: Measuring Creative and Media in Tandem

There is, however, a growing recognition that the industry needs to change. Marketers are beginning to understand that media and creative are not separate entities but symbiotic forces that must be measured and optimized together. "We need to measure creativity with the same rigor we apply to media," says Marc Pritchard, Chief Brand Officer at Procter & Gamble. "Data can help us understand what truly resonates with consumers."

New tools are emerging to make that possible. AI-powered platforms like mktg.ai are pioneering an integrated approach, analyzing both creative and media performance simultaneously to offer a more holistic view of campaign effectiveness. Unlike solutions that focus solely on creative elements, mktg.ai evaluates how creative and media interact, providing insights into how media spend amplifies creative impact and vice versa.

The Madison & Wall report suggests that tighter integration between creative and media teams—whether through software, budgetary restructuring, or agency realignment—could yield significant benefits. "The unit cost for every dollar of creative or media activation might be higher," the report states, "but the decisions marketers and their agencies make would probably be superior in terms of driving overall campaign effectiveness."

The future of measurement lies not in assessing creative and media separately, but in developing holistic methodologies that evaluate their combined effectiveness. With the rise of generative AI and more sophisticated attribution models, marketers have the opportunity to build a measurement framework that accounts for the dynamic interplay between creative storytelling and media execution.

The Future of Advertising: The Synergy of Creative and Media

What does the future hold for advertising effectiveness? It starts with a shift in mindset. Brands that win will be those that stop treating creativity as an abstract art and start treating it as a core business strategy, measured alongside media in an integrated framework. That means making creative excellence a priority at the highest levels of decision-making. It means valuing bold ideas over incremental optimizations. It means resisting the industry's addiction to immediate results and playing the long game.

It also means better collaboration between creative and media teams. For too long, these disciplines have operated in silos—media planners obsessed with targeting, creatives focused on storytelling. But the most successful campaigns are those where media and creative work in harmony.

Ultimately, marketing effectiveness is not an either-or equation. The best campaigns are neither purely data-driven nor purely creative—they are both. As Keith Weed, former CMO of Unilever, puts it: "The best campaigns aren't just data-driven or creatively brilliant; they are both."

For brands willing to embrace this philosophy and measure creative and media together rather than in isolation, the rewards are huge. For those who continue to treat creativity as an afterthought, the risk is irrelevance. The choice is clear.