Advertisers Must Focus On Creative Diversity
Creating more paid social ads won't fix a creative problem, according to MarTech. Advertisers need to focus on creative diversity to improve performance.
Original reporting · martech.org
Original: “More paid social ads won’t fix a creative problem”
Read “More paid social ads won’t fix a creative problem” at MarTech →
How this was written. Content Catalyst wrote this article with a language model from MarTech’s reporting (model: @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast); it describes that reporting rather than adding to it. The original, linked above, is the full story.
Key points from MarTech’s report
- Advertisers need to focus on creative diversity to improve paid social performance.
- Creative diversity is about giving the platform and team genuinely different inputs to learn from.
- Advertisers should aim for a balanced approach to creative testing, considering ad spend and objectives.
When paid social performance declines, advertisers often create more ads, but this may not be the solution, MarTech reported. The problem lies in the lack of creative diversity, which is different from creative volume.
Creative diversity is about giving the platform and the team genuinely different inputs to learn from, not just developing an arbitrary number of assets. This diversity feeds advertising algorithms, which rely on automation to determine ad delivery.
The algorithm can only optimize against the creative inputs it receives, so if all ads communicate the same messages, it limits the number of hypotheses the system can explore. Testing minor variations, such as a red background versus a yellow one, won't significantly impact performance.
Different people respond to the same product for different reasons, so personas play a large role. Advertisers should give the system enough strong creative variations to discover which messages resonate with which people. This allows the algorithm to make matches and improve performance.
A balanced approach to creative testing is crucial, considering the number of meaningful creative variations needed relative to ad spend and objectives. The right number of ads depends on budget, conversion volume, audience size, and product capacity.
Advertisers should build a creative portfolio, not a content treadmill, treating creative as a portfolio of hypotheses. This approach creates a healthier creative system, where media and creative teams work together to introduce new creative variables and experiment with ideas.
Questions and answers
What is the difference between creative volume and creative diversity?
Creative volume refers to the number of ads, while creative diversity refers to the variety of ideas and messages being tested.
How can advertisers introduce creative diversity?
Advertisers can introduce creative diversity by testing different hooks, messages, angles, creators, formats, visuals, offers, proof, tone, and context.
What is the goal of creative testing?
The goal of creative testing is to discover which messages resonate with which people and to give the algorithm enough strong creative variations to make matches and improve performance.
