Creativity drives sales - don’t let the tech crowd tell you otherwise

By Simon Kvist Gaulshøj, ceo, Adnami

Over the years, many marketers have come to regard digital display as a performance channel, mainly to be deployed for retargeting and tactical campaigns and nothing more. But something about that has never felt quite right. Think of the theory of the classic user journey, in which two-thirds of your spend should go to upper-funnel activities. Why should digital be an exception?

We think digital ads can not only sell products but also build brands, using arresting, eye-catching creative. Throughout the history of advertising and marketing - up until the point when digital technology came and dazzled us with its ingenuity - it was well known that creativity was the biggest driver of sales. And our argument is that the same holds true for digital. Hence, we would argue digital brand advertising should be a default line item on every media plan.

According to a 2017 study by Nielsen/NCS, the contribution of creative execution to driving sales in digital campaigns is 56%, against 30% for media. From our perspective - and in spite of those who argue that new format experimentation went out of the window in 2020 - a lot of brands have taken that on board.

Adnami’s mission is to facilitate creativity by offering high-impact display formats for programmatic execution, and we have grown consistently through the pandemic. Every month, we run more than 1,100 campaigns for clients including Heineken, BMW, American Express, Disney, Lego, Samsung and Red Bull.

Captivate and engage

This might sound like technology, rather than creativity. And it’s true, we are a tech company, providing impactful and attention-grabbing formats for desktop and mobile, from skins to scrollers. We exist to fill a void in the ad-tech ecosystem, allowing publishers to offer impactful ads of a kind not supported by the global marketing platforms that account for 90% of digital advertising.

But the difference in our outlook is that we think technology should enable advertising creativity, not displace it. Display advertising, which has been allowed to become the channel of retargeting and tactical performance - and consequently has made a nuisance of itself in the eyes of ad-blocking consumers - has the ability to provide a showcase for that creativity, with captivating, engaging, high-impact solutions.

According to a 2017 study by Nielsen/NCS, the contribution of creative execution to driving sales in digital campaigns is 56%, against 30% for media. When creative is weak, the sales lift is weak too, and tends to come largely from the media side of the equation. Where creative is strong, incremental sales are higher and the contribution of media much smaller.

In the same study, Nielsen also reported a far wider range of quality in digital creative compared to TV - sometimes much better, sometimes much worse. Where the digital creative was weak, so was the performance. “Even the best media plan won’t save a campaign with poor creative,” concluded the report’s authors.

So creativity in digital has science behind it, but there are other imperatives too. For one, the increasing importance of digital channels means they are no longer just a performance-driven complement to mainstream media, but a vital brand-building opportunity.

For another, given the enormous consolidation of media power among agencies and large networks, it feels good to offer media buyers and -sellers the ability to transact digital brand advertising through effective programmatic campaigns, where creative possibilities are not compromised.

Harness old-fashioned creativity

And meanwhile, there is a sense of advertising coming full circle, as third-party cookies approach their Google-designated expiry date and advertisers’ thoughts turn once again to context and creative to drive their strategies. Technology has had its wings scorched by the increasing heat of our privacy concerns, and as advertisers return to first principles, the need for legitimately impactful advertising will become more apparent than ever.

Our tech solution can be leveraged by publishers and agencies directly and is relevant to a broad spectrum of sectors, from beauty and technology to financial services and FMCG, as well as entertainment, retail and fashion.

Some of these sectors have endured greater difficulties than others during these hard times, but all need to face the future with resilience and positivity, and that means finding new ways to harness what’s always worked the best: old-fashioned creativity.