AI can scale ads, but great creatives drive brand impact

Great marketers know how to analyze campaign data and pull the right performance levers. However, creative quality often takes a backseat to other factors — even though it shouldn’t. Ads with strong creative deliver roughly 30% higher ROI than average, per The State of Creative Effectiveness report (registration required) from Zappi and VaynerMedia.

That’s a significant opportunity, yet many brands aren’t capitalizing on it. Consider that unaided brand recall averages just 68%, meaning a third of impressions — and the budget behind them — are effectively wasted because viewers can’t remember who the ad was for.

The recall gap is most pronounced among younger audiences, while older viewers tend to retain brand names more easily. Bridging that divide requires creative that works harder to turn impressions into lasting impact.

6 creative levers and when to use them

Not all creative elements deliver equal impact, according to the report. Some add polish without moving the needle, while others meaningfully improve recall and ROI. Understanding which levers to pull — and when — can help brands focus their efforts where it counts most.

• Use of humor earns an incremental bump in distinctiveness but only a negligible sales nudge. The joke attracts the crowd yet rarely escorts them to the checkout line.
• Celebrities perform an odd sleight-of-hand: they make the ad ever-so-slightly easier to spot yet siphon away long-term brand impact, proving a famous face can hog the limelight — and the credit.
• Music choice remains a reliable emotional accelerant; when the soundtrack is baked into the idea early, love scores climb rather than merely hum in the background.
• Use of AI production divides viewers into three tidy camps — fans, foes and the blissfully indifferent — but more than half say it doesn’t change how they feel about the brand. That makes generative tools perfect for versioning edits, not headline ideas.
• Length of the ad has less impact, and great storytelling wins regardless of whether an ad is 15, 30 or 60 seconds.
• Distinctive brand assets — logos, colors, characters or other recognizable elements — outperform every other lever. While this may seem obvious, the gap in brand recall across a significant amount of creative suggests otherwise.

Dig deeper: 3 ways to get more from your paid social ad spend

How to apply this in your category 

The study evaluated four core aspects of creative performance, each linked to a different stage of consumer response:

• Distinctiveness measures how unique or standout a creative asset is. The first spark makes an ad recognizable or hard to ignore.
• Emotion tracks how well the creative builds an empathetic connection with the audience. It’s not just about standing out but resonating.
• Brand recall reveals whether viewers remember who the ad was for, which is crucial for turning attention into attribution.
• Purchase uplift assesses whether that memory and emotional impact drive action or conversion down the line.

The goal is to identify and close the gaps most affecting your brand’s creative performance. Zooming out by category, the findings vary widely, though not surprisingly.

• Salty snacks lead in humor-driven recall, but their most significant opportunity is to build a better emotional connection with their product-loving audiences.
• Alcohol brand advertising delivers the highest purchase lift of any sector yet leaves much to be desired with specific brand recall, meaning consumers aren’t seeing individual brand identity from all those beautifully poured shots. 
• Personal care brands excel at emotional connection yet generally avoid humor, which could help them stand out in a sea of relative sameness. 
• Financial services ads use mascots and quirky characters to aid with recall but often lack emotional resonance, which could help some brands stand out from the pack.
• Pet care creative is a masterclass in affection, yet even the cutest puppy can’t compensate for logos viewers forget; the category’s task is to make the brand as sticky as the sentiment.  

Brands must invest in assets that unmistakably announce who they are, then let humor, music or the latest celebrity or influencer amplify that signal.

What CMOs should do about this

Capturing consumers’ attention isn’t easy in the first place, yet building awareness and capitalizing on recall should be approached carefully and methodically. The report lays this out in terms of a three-year horizon.

Months 1-12

With unaided recall languishing at 68%, one-third of paid impressions evaporate into the ether — a polite way of saying you just bought air time for the competition. 

Start by auditing every piece of work for distinctive brand assets. List:

• Colors
• Characters.
• Sonic stingers.
• Anything that signals your brand at a glance.

Where assets exist, document and mandate them. Where they don’t, invest in creating a minimum viable set and deploy them consistently.

Months 12-24

With a foundation in place, it’s time to shift from asset hygiene to audience breadth. The data shows that once viewers are over 46, ads tend to feel less unique and less emotionally engaging, yet they’re more likely to remember which brand the ad was for.

Translation: you’re entertaining people with disposable income but not moving them. 

• Fund cohort-based content sprints that let your teams iterate messages for older segments without cannibalizing youth work.
• Use paid social as the petri dish and amplify only what lands.

Months 24-36

At this point, the conversation pivots to scalability. Consumers split neatly into:

• A third who respond well to AI-assisted ads.
• A third who don’t care.
• A third who are not fans of the robots at all. 

That tells you AI is safe for versioning. Think thousands of cut-downs and dynamic banners, yet many consumers will not find the big idea compelling if it comes from AI.

Dig deeper: 3 reasons your paid social ads aren’t converting (and how to fix them)

Conclusion

Great creative isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s a force multiplier when built on a solid brand foundation. Tactics like humor, celebrities and music can enhance recall or emotional connection, but only when they support and amplify your distinctive brand assets. 

Consistency matters: Identify what makes your brand instantly recognizable, then let creativity build on that foundation. In an environment where attention is scarce and media spend is high, clarity and cohesion in creativity make your dollars work harder.