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The Disconnect in Advertising: Insights from the New TripleLift and EMARKETER Report

The advertising landscape continues to evolve at a breakneck pace, with creativity emerging as a crucial element for driving performance. A new report from TripleLift, a leader in creative supply-side platform (SSP), in partnership with EMARKETER, sheds light on the importance of creativity while also revealing significant challenges related to measurement and scale in the industry.

The Importance of Creative in Advertising

According to the report, approximately 83.5% of marketers recognize that creativity is instrumental in enhancing advertising performance. However, a troubling disconnect persists, as many professionals struggle to define what constitutes 'great creative' and are finding it challenging to deploy creativity uniformly across various platforms. This lack of a unified standard means that over 40% of marketing teams operate without a common framework, leading to inefficiencies in feedback loops and approval processes.

The report finds that among the attributes defining high-quality creative, clear brand storytelling and visually compelling design stand out, with both cited by 69.5% of respondents. Furthermore, the importance of personalization and audience relevance is underscored, as 66.5% of marketers emphasize the necessity of targeting specific segments effectively. This illustrates an urgent need for marketers to refine their strategies to achieve creative effectiveness while ensuring that their efforts resonate with audiences.

The Role of AI in Creative Workflows

AI has increasingly found its place in the marketing realm, aiding in various creative tasks, including ad copy development (50%) and the creation of images and video content (37.8%). As noted in the report, over half of the surveyed marketers expect AI to revolutionize workflow automation over the next two years, improving both performance optimization and reporting insights. This shift signifies marketers' intention to make operational efficiency a priority, allowing them to focus more on strategic creativity.

Max Willens, Senior Analyst at EMARKETER, highlights a critical consideration: for AI to significantly boost productivity, marketers must be willing to integrate AI throughout the creative production process. This necessitates a comprehensive approach to how brands and agencies manage production, emphasizing the potential for breakthrough improvements in efficiency.

Infrastructure Challenges in Scaling Creative

To effectively reach consumers in today’s multifaceted digital environment, marketers must navigate campaigns across multiple channels, including online video, display, and native formats, which dominate the digital advertising landscape. According to survey results, online video (79.9%) and display advertising (77.4%) top the list of preferred formats, while connected TV (CTV) presents significant growth potential, adopted by half of the respondents.

Despite acknowledging the importance of delivering relevant creative at scale, many marketers face infrastructural hurdles, including outdated assets (54.3%) and insufficient creative versions (51.8%). These limitations obstruct their ability to manage effective programmatic campaigns, while reliance on a single advertising format could diminish overall creative impact for nearly half of the marketers surveyed.

The Urgent Need for Improved Measurement

Measurement has never been more vital in the advertising domain. While 71.3% of marketers acknowledge that evaluating creative has gained importance, only 58.5% are regularly correlating creative quality with performance metrics. Alarmingly, just over half (51.2%) possess reliable metrics or dashboards to facilitate this connection. As the demand for precise data-driven insights escalates, 73.2% of marketers expect data analysis to take a more prominent role in fostering creative success.

Izzy Morris, paid social and programmatic lead at Vodafone, emphasizes the essential link between creative diagnostics and outcome metrics, advocating for a shift away from last-touch attribution to more nuanced methods like incrementality testing to gauge creative impact.

Strategies for Enhancing Creative Effectiveness

In conclusion, the report outlines several strategies that marketers can implement to bolster creative effectiveness:

1. Establish Creative Standards: Align cross-functional teams on clear creative guidelines to ensure consistency across campaigns.
2. Leverage AI: Utilize AI tools not just for increased efficiency but also to enhance creativity while ensuring human oversight remains a part of the creative process.
3. Invest in Analytics: Prioritize creative analytics that connect output to measurable outcomes, helping to illustrate which creative elements drive ROI.
4. Adopt a Strategic Approach: Treat creative as a vital lever that impacts all levels of the marketing funnel.

With these strategies in place, marketers can better navigate the complexities of modern advertising, leveraging creativity more effectively to drive results.

For further insights, you can download the full report here.

Research Methodology

The findings of this report were based on a survey conducted in June 2025, involving responses from 164 marketing professionals in the United States, intended to capture their perspectives on the role of creativity in programmatic advertising.

About EMARKETER

EMARKETER is a premier provider of data, insights, and forecasts in the marketing and advertising sectors, helping organizations make informed decisions that maximize revenue and respond efficiently to digital marketplace changes.

About TripleLift

TripleLift is a transformative force in the digital advertising sphere, redefining standard ad placements into performance-driven, scalable experiences across various formats. Headquartered in New York, TripleLift is dedicated to creative excellence, supporting publishers and advertisers in achieving their goals while fostering improved experiences for consumers.