• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, Yesterday

Creative is one of the key drivers of marketing performance. But too few brands are able to determine that value, judging by Demystifying Creative Intelligence, a study by Winterberry Group. 

Brands face the following challenges in documenting the power of their creative investments:

• Ability to explain the connection to sales — 34%
• Ability to explain the value to finance/CFO — 34%
• Lack of alignment of strategy, creative and media teams — 31%
• Ability to explain the value to procurement — 29%
• Misalignment of marketing and agency objectives — 26%
• Inconsistent feedback loops — 14%
• Lack of real-time creative performance data — 11%
• Lack of metrics — 11%
• All the above — 1%

Creative activation is another problem, with brands facing these hurdles:

• Cost management of production process — 52%
• Reduced creative optimization time — 35%
• Compliance/Regulatory adherence — 33%
• Alignment of strategy, creative and media teams — 27%
• Versioning of assets — 20%
• Adherence to brand guidelines — 12%
• Tracking and managing assets — 7%
• Ability to audit assets — 6%

This is a very urgent need, given that the global media spend on advertising is expected to reach $1.12 trillion by 2026, and that creative and content investments are projected to top $140 billion. 

Upwards of 5 trillion creative assets are now being produced each year. But to put it bluntly, they are not being “optimized.”

On the positive side, marketers are trying to build a consistent measurement framework using in-channel analytics, cross-channel tracking. 

“Adoption is expected to start with channels where creative data is most accessible — including social (via API access), email and mobile messaging (consented environments), and then expand into programmatic digital formats such as display, video, audio, and CTV.” 

There was a historical precedent for this during the early days of digital marketing.  

“Email marketing led the way, adapting techniques from variable data printing to support the dynamic assembly of content based on simple rules (e.g., location, behavior, or preferences),” the study states.

And now? “Though AI and automation began to support versioning, these tools were used primarily in engagement marketing — especially email — rather than in the broader paid media ecosystem.”

But that is changing. “Advancements in AI, especially generative models and LLMs, are transforming how creative assets are produced, versioned, and optimized,” the study continues. “What used to require weeks of manual production can now be accomplished in hours, with creative systems drawing on 1st-, 2nd-, and 3rd-party data, market research, and real-time performance signals.”

Winterberry Group surveyed 200 brand and agency leaders in the U.S. and the U.K. from March-May 2025.