Big Money Medium, Sub-Optimal Creative: Why Now is the Time for a Creative Revolution in Digital Advertising

The implications of this finding cannot be overstated. Let’s compare TV to digital for a moment. This year, a :30 spot in the World Series will reportedly cost an advertiser $450,000. As is nearly always the case with large TV investments, a vast majority of these ads will go through rigorous pre-testing before they see the light of day. In fact, advertisers pre-test multiple strategies and executions to determine what resonates best with consumers and what will likely provide the strongest sales impact. To juxtapose that, in the digital space, a homepage takeover on a major portal can now cost upward of $1MM on a key date (and routinely above and beyond the $450,000 World Series investment). Sure enough, most of these ads are developed without any kind of pre-testing at all. The question is why?

The answer, I believe, is simple. Despite advertisers’ increasing investment in digital media, copy-testing is simply not yet an accepted discipline in digital. This primarily lies in the way digital ad effectiveness research has been historically funded. Unlike television pre-testing (which is funded and owned by the “client-side”), digital marketing effectiveness research has typically been carved out of media plan budgets. This is a result of three key factors:

1. Historically, a small proportion of total ad budgets have been allocated to digital. With a relatively minimal investment in digital, the importance of getting the creative “right” was simply not a high priority on the client-side.
2. The use of ad formats such as static banners has historically meant that production costs were low and so the cost of being wrong was minimal. As the use of rich media and video increases, so do production costs, which, in turn, means that the cost of not having an effective ad becomes material.
3. Because so much of digital advertising has been (and in many cases still is) transacted and evaluated in strictly quantitative terms (i.e. where impressions are bought and sold on exchanges and delivered through complex targeting algorithms), it can be easy to overlook the impact creative quality can have on the overall effectiveness of a campaign. Many digital creatives know this all too well.

The time has come, however, for the digital advertising community to recognize that creative matters and in a big way. Marketers can’t simply rely on accurate targeting - even at heavy weight levels - without simultaneously delivering a persuasive message. Gian Fulgoni, Comscore’s Chairman, addressed this very topic in a recent blog post titled “Four Times Zero is Still Zero.”

Digital advertising formats are improving by the day, providing the canvas for excellent creative to take form. There are new and imaginative ways to integrate branding elements into the experience and develop high-impact creative. Recent announcements from several of the top web publishers promoting big, rich and interactive new ad formats serve as further proof of that evolution. The real question going forward will be, “Will the digital ad community leverage these powerful new branding mechanisms in a way that allows the art of the creative to play an equal or even leading role to the science behind the buy?”

There is no doubt that digital excels when it comes to media planning, and that the medium is inherently one of the most efficient delivery vehicles in the history of advertising. That side of the equation alone drives enormous value for many of the stakeholders in the ecosystem. But when one takes a step back and considers that creative quality is 4 times as important as key media planning elements in driving sales, it is easy to see that there is so much more value to be created – for advertisers, for publishers, and for everyone in between.

It’s time we shift our focus on creating this value. It’s time for digital advertising to get CREATIVE.