Only 36% of respondents in a recent Plus Company-Statista survey of 350 marketers revealed that they were very satisfied with using their existing tools to measure the impact of their creative content.
Marketers have relied on traditional tools such as brand tracking, sales/revenue trend analysis, campaign performance metrics, media mix modeling, attribution modeling, and incrementality testing for decades. It’s no wonder, then, that in a rapidly evolving digital age, the remaining 64% of respondents say they are dissatisfied with their measurement capabilities. Traditional methods simply aren’t keeping pace with modern marketing methods.
Of all the measurable elements of a marketing campaign, creative content is the most elusive. Clichés such as “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” come to mind, because how do you quantify something as subjective as it is creative? How can a marketer connect creative execution to a sale?
The other problem is that these approaches were designed in and for market conditions that no longer exist. In today’s fast-paced and ever-changing marketplace, traditional methods slow down creative research and development and reduce competitiveness. Who has weeks, or even months, to wait for the results of a brand study?
This is no longer enough. We now operate in a real-time environment that requires the ability to react on the fly to changing market conditions. Indeed, in the Plus Company-Statista study, 58% of marketers cited the lack of real-time data as a crucial challenge in adapting creative strategies.
AI can solve this problem, enabling more responsive campaigns that respond to market demands with greater agility. It can provide real-time insights and more accurate data on audience engagement, allowing marketers to make more informed decisions that drive better results.
Businesses that fully embrace AI-powered solutions will be better equipped to produce high-performing campaigns, adapt to changing consumer behaviors, and measure creative impact with greater precision. By evolving their approach to strategy and creative development, brands can remain competitive in an increasingly dynamic market. In the Plus Company-Statista survey, 89% of marketers agree. But only 54% have fully integrated AI for creative ideation and strategy into their processes.
Why this gap? An important factor is resistance to change. In total, 45% of marketers identify it as a significant barrier. In small businesses, this figure rises to 71%.
Mid-level professionals show the most enthusiasm for AI, with 57% rating it “very useful,” but at the VP level, that enthusiasm drops to just 49%. largely due to cost concerns.
The proliferation of new technologies, costly upgrades to AI capabilities across major workplace platforms, and the difficulty of deploying mass access to all employees continue to pose very real challenges to manage as well for the leaders.
And yet, the benefits offered by AI adoption should outweigh these concerns. Take for example identifying the target market. Lack of comprehensive audience insights and data can result in a limited understanding of consumer behavior and preferences, making it difficult to develop briefs that result in effective creative. For planning purposes, AI can automatically integrate relevant audience, creative, media and market insights into a brief with much greater predictive power.
When it comes to measuring campaign performance, AI allows marketers to study audience engagement in real-time and how different segments interact with creative content. AI tracks conversion impact across your target audience’s interactions with top, middle, and bottom of the funnel content. A comprehensive analysis of creative attribution makes it possible to assess long-term impact by studying audience behavior before, during and after the exhibition. This analysis refines the message by measuring emotional responses, recall and brand awareness, ensuring the creative contributes to the overall success of the campaign.
To stay competitive, brands must break through the resistance and invest in AI tools that unlock deeper insights, provide actionable recommendations, and streamline processes. The future of creative impact measurement lies in adopting AI-powered tools to stay competitive and agile in an ever-changing market.
Novelty always arouses fear of change, and there are always those who prefer to live with the methods and tools they know rather than explore the potential benefits of those they do not know, even if they recognize that the old ways may just work. We cannot meet the demands of a constantly changing market.
Whether it’s fear of change, organizational reluctance, enterprise-wide integration and implementation challenges, or simply cost, the barriers to adoption AI as a means to power creative content planning, measurement and optimization remains intimidating for most businesses. Although most agree that AI is a valuable tool, actual integration is slow.
To develop a deeper understanding of the value of overcoming these obstacles, The 2025 Marketing Guide to AI and Measuring Creative Impact is a great place to start. There you will find the results of the latest Plus Company-Statista report on the adoption of AI and the competitive advantages it offers.
You can download it here.
