Creative Is king for performance.

When performance declines, most marketers immediately attempt to adjust their bidding strategies, audience targeting, landing pages, or platform distribution. All of this works; however, there’s one often-overlooked lever that can be the difference between success and failure in your campaign’s performance: Your ad creatives. 
 

Here, we will look at why ad creatives are a strong driver of performance, how to measure impact, and what defines a top-performing creative. Whether you’re running campaigns on Meta, TikTok, Google Search, or Display, you’ll walk away with actionable insights to help improve your results by focusing on the creative itself.

The Shift from Media-First to Creative-First Approach

In a privacy-first world, platforms like Meta and Google have been increasingly automating bidding and targeting, which means we have less control over who will see our ads, making it more important than ever to create targeted ad creatives. They are now one of the biggest differentiators when it comes to how well campaigns can perform. 

Ad creatives drive more than 56 % of the return on investment (ROI) of campaigns, according to industry reports, while Google claims as much as 70 % of the success of a campaign is determined by the creative itself.

It is safe to say that the quality of your ad creative is one of the first steps to powering your campaign’s results.

What’s ad creative Fatigue – And how you can fix it

Did you know that the average consumer attention span is around 8 seconds, and it can be as short as 1 to 3 seconds in younger users? That’s how much time you’ve got to get and retain attention. 

One thing that even the most compelling ad creatives have in common is an expiration date. Audiences become fatigued with repetitive visuals and messages, and performance declines — a phenomenon known as creative fatigue. 

You may find that this triggers higher CPAs, lower CTRs, or less overall engagement, which is all the more reason to have frequent creative refreshes, especially on high-frequency platforms such as Meta and TikTok. How to fix it? Well, rotating and iterating creatives can also significantly extend the life of a campaign, maintaining performance over time.

What makes a high-performing creative

A high-performing creative asset is more than just a pretty design — it needs to think strategically about the platform, the campaign’s objective , and which audience you want to target. All of this will influence the type of ad creative needed. 

We use the AIDA model to guide our creative framework. AIDA is a popular marketing tool that outlines the four stages a person goes through before making a purchase or buying a service. It stands for Attention (or Awareness), Interest, Desire and Action.

For each of these stages, we can leverage different creative elements:

1. Attention/Awareness: Eye-catching headlines, influencer’s unboxing, UGC-style content.
2. Interest: Create storytelling elements, focus on benefits.
3. Desire: Be more salesy and targeted. Add a more decisive CTA to direct the user on what to do next.
4. Action: This is the last step. Leverage the sense of urgency or FOMO with easy-to-read, concise and direct copy.

Apart from these insights, you also need to consider the platform-specific content type. For example:

• Use vertical formats for Instagram Reels, snappy copy for Search Campaigns, and UGC-style content for TikTok.
• Clear value prop: Make the benefit obvious in the first 3 seconds, especially on video ads.
• Create short videos when leveraging YouTube short ads or TikTok.

Ultimately, by A/B testing various versions of headlines, visuals, and formats, you’ll determine what truly resonates with your audience.

How to evaluate Ad Creative effectiveness

Let the numbers do the talking in your creative strategy.

Performance and engagement metrics will help you to determine what is effective and why. Prioritize your key performance indicators (KPIs), and monitor results by creative asset or theme to identify winning approaches. The KPIs you should look for depend on your campaign’s goals, but it could be:

• Engagement metrics like click-through-rate (CTR), engagement rate, video completion rate, etc.
• Performance metrics such as revenue generated by a specific creative, volume of purchase, ROAS and ROI

Constantly A/B testing is key to continually optimizing performance. As you progress, you’ll create a feedback loop between creative production and performance data, enabling you to iterate more quickly and get smarter more efficiently.

Answers to Common Questions About Creative for Performance Campaigns

How Delta Growth Builds Performance-Driven Creatives

We believe that ad creatives have a significant impact on a campaign’s performance. We do things very differently from agencies that get lost in the shiny visuals or the data that means nothing – what we develop is transparent, insight-led creative that drives results.

Our performance marketers, designers, and analysts collaborate to create advertisements that not only look great but also convert even better. Whether you’re starting a new campaign or scaling existing ones, we’ll help you find the creative levers that will move the needle.

Book a discovery call with the Delta Growth team today.