The complete guide to successful ad creatives

To the data-driven advertiser, ad creative seems like an indeterminable variable. You can tailor every element of your campaign to perfection but fail to drive any results with forgettable creative. And while you can certainly A/B test elements of your creative, creative direction is outside many advertisers’ scope.

Pair that with short customer attention spans, ad fatigue on digital platforms, and the increasing demand for personalization, and you have a challenge: how to create ad creative that cuts through the advertising noise.

Firstly, let’s specify what ad creative is (and is not). Then let’s talk about how to make effective ad creatives and where creative services come in.

What is Ad Creative?

Ad creative comprises the visual and written elements of an advertisement. The mission of ad creative is to inspire action and speak to an advertiser’s target audience.

“Inspire action” can involve inviting a user to click the ad, use a sign-up form, or any other campaign goal. This response is typically driven by the call-to-action text, also part of the creative.

Though much else goes into an ad campaign — targeting, bidding, optimizing — the creative is the package that presents an ad to the audience.

Why is Ad Creative Important?

Obviously, how you present the ad matters. However, creative is actually the most important factor in advertising and worth investing time into. These are the reasons why ad creative is so important.

Grab attention

Since ad creative is the package that presents an ad, it’s an opportunity to make an impression. Some audiences will seek efficient and straightforward packaging — others prefer wrapping that makes a statement. 

The trick is in learning how to present the right information to your audience. How do you make an ad that will stand out to your ICP, who has seen a deluge of ads from your industry? Creative is the biggest advertising differentiator between you and a competitor.

Enhance brand recall

Your ad will be many viewers’ only impression of your brand. As you build up touchpoints with your customer, they’ll see it multiple times. 

People see hundreds of similar ads a day. The branded elements become memorization flashcards that enable us to recall companies by logo, slogan, jingle, or even something subtle like aesthetics. 

Your ad will imprint on the mind. Be sure that imprint is positive!

Support KPIs

In a study comparing reach, context, recency, creative, and targeting, creative quality is the most important factor in inspiring viewer action. Unfortunately, many teams treat it like an afterthought when it’s the biggest driver of KPIs on direct response campaigns. The temptation to skimp on creative is great, but the payoff of investing in creative is more rewarding.

The Wrong Priorities: Why Creative is Ignored

We asked Adrian D'Souza, CEO of creative technology and services company Aderize, for his thoughts on what advertisers can do to craft creative that resonates. Aderize has years of experience crafting creative across key channels, and they’re aware of why creative succeeds or falls flat.

Overprioritizing targeting

For starters, creative is underappreciated when it doesn’t achieve any of its touted benefits.

As Adrian says, “Historically, the advertising industry has prioritized targeting over the quality of creative, often overlooking its impact.”

Adrian’s right — but as we illustrated above, there’s good evidence that creative enhances ROI. The Aderize team has conducted some research on its impact: Their data from thousands of campaigns indicates quality creative delivers results comparable to doubling or tripling media spend.

Overprioritizing aesthetics without strategy

The other issue, however, is the opposite end of the pendulum: “Another common mistake with creative campaigns is focusing too heavily on aesthetics while neglecting strategy.” 

Tying visual appeal into your strategy (and backing that strategy up with hard numbers!) teaches your team’s skeptics creative’s value: “People overlook the value of data in shaping creative decisions, leading to messaging that might look good but fails to resonate or drive action. Clear and concise CTAs are a must. It's a big mistake to leave audiences unsure of the next step to take.” 

Underprioritizing context

Lastly, creative fails when it’s not optimized for the platform: “Some campaigns miss the mark by not optimizing for mobile experiences, where a significant portion of ad interactions occur.” Imagine running a digital banner ad on CTV — 30 seconds of long, jarring silence. Users traverse dozens of screens daily, so your ads have to be optimized across all platforms.

What Makes an Ad Creative Successful?

Essentially, Adrian maintains that successful creative hinges on messaging, visuals, and tone:

“By balancing these factors to match your audience preferences, the creative speaks to viewers on a personal level. The balance of these factors is unique to every campaign, but clear messaging, a compelling CTA, and bold design are paramount.”

Balancing these factors takes some best practices, which Adrian outlines:

• “Tell a story and evoke an emotional connection with the brand — whether through humor, inspiration, or shared values.

• Be consistent with creative across all platforms for better brand recognition.

• Use data-driven insights when available to guide creative decisions. 

• Focus on lightweight design for fast loading performance. 

• Ensure cross-device compatibility so the ad performs seamlessly on devices where most engagement occurs.”

His team has spent years developing these best practices to perform across a variety of campaigns and channels. Emphasis on team — an individual contributor wouldn’t accomplish all the best practices above. 

The ADPLAN framework

Another way of vetting your ad creatives is Kellogg’s ADPLAN framework. The framework relies on six elements that lean heavily into user behavior and social psychology:

• Attention: Will this piece of communication attract interest?

• Distinction: Is the ad unique?

• Positioning: Does the brand benefit come through?

• Linkage: Will people remember and associate this advertising to your brand?

• Amplification: What will people take away from the message?

• Net equity: Is this creative consistent with your brand?

Answering these questions illuminates whether you’re upholding the main objectives of creative: enhancing brand awareness, garnering attention, and supporting your KPIs.

Many of these questions can’t be answered in a silo. To understand whether an ad performs against these objectives, advertisers have to take their ideas to a team, or better yet, externally, for feedback.

Personalization

It’s not enough for an ad to be eye-catching. With the oversaturation of digital ads, your message has to speak to the viewer personally.

Adrian reminds us that “Personalization, powered by data, enhances relevance, directly tailoring to the viewer’s needs or interests. This allows the ads to resonate with the viewer. “

Powering personalization with data means researching the viewer’s needs and interests. It’s one of the most important differentiators in a world where viewers scroll past countless out-of-touch or impersonal ads.

How to Measure Effective Ad Creatives

This is why creative is often underappreciated: It’s not easy to measure.

Adrian mentioned a couple metrics that are symptoms of effective ad creatives: “Engagement rates are an important factor as they provide insight into how much attention the consumer paid to the creative, and CTRs show that the ad did enough to drive an action.”

Some tools let you gauge metrics across multiple campaigns to give you a better view of how your creative makes an impact. For instance, AdRoll lets you track multiple campaigns from one dashboard for critical metrics like conversions and revenue.

Obviously, the KPIs you measure will depend on the type of ad. If you’re aiming for brand awareness, metrics related to reach are important, like clicks, CTR, and engagement. For direct response ads, you might dial down to metrics that indicate conversion.

However, ad activity isn’t a holistic view of your campaign. Adrian reminds us that you’ll need other tools to measure overarching KPIs like time on page, on-page conversions, foot traffic, and loyalty behavior. 

We see time and again: last-click attribution models fail to give you the full picture. If you want to measure creative performance, you’ll have to justify how it rolls up to higher goals, too, in addition to tweaks and A/B tests.

In-House or Agency?: How Creative Services Help

Now you know how ad creative works…in theory. But if you’re missing the years of experience making creative, the team to help you out, or the time to make your own, outsourced creative services fill that gap.

Some ad platforms can lend a hand. AdRoll offers free creatives to its customers and design consultations to certain clients. Agencies like Aderize are also an option for collaborating on creative: “When creative resonates with consumers, it creates a great consumer experience and immense value for the entire ecosystem, including our partners like AdRoll, as well as advertisers and publishers.”

Getting the best out of your creative requires these components, shared by Adrian:

• Defining clear objectives—whether the goal is driving sales, increasing brand awareness, or generating leads—so the creative strategy aligns perfectly with desired outcomes.  

• Share detailed asset files, brand guidelines, and past campaign learnings to help us craft on-brand, precisely targeted ads — specific font files help as well. 

• Of course it’s also important that learnings from past campaigns are shared, which lets us keep to the rules while building on the past. 

Does this sound easier than making your own creative from scratch? Creative services need context, the more the better, to mitigate change rounds and launch campaigns faster.

However, finding the right creative services can alleviate the stress of advertising. Agencies love what they do: “We founded Aderize to address longstanding industry challenges—slow production, heavy files, and uninspiring designs…and we have a LOT of fun doing it!”

Last updated on December 9th, 2024.