Digital media isn’t killing creativity – marketers are

If you can see past the Eyes Wide Shut vibes, effectiveness conferences are treasure troves for people who want to move beyond the superficial hype and actually make marketing work. On that same day, I dashed over to an event thrown by one of the big social platforms, packed with agency and client partners. The contrast was stark.

The average age halved. The conversation shifted from big, sweeping TV campaigns to AI tools, creators and asset churn. One room discussed “ads don’t wear out,” the other worried about creative fatigue after a week. One group was schooled by FMCGs and big agency strategy decks. The other: Google Garage and Meta blueprints.

I’m not even sure these groups are aware of each other’s existence: a hilarious (and tragic) example of market segmentation at its finest. The sad bit is that this disconnect is killing marketing effectiveness and creativity. We’ve ended up with two echo chambers, each pushing half-truths to undermine the other. “Brands can’t be built on digital.” “Targeting and novelty replace long-term campaigns.” Blah blah blah.

We’d all be better off spiking the free Mad//Fest beers with acid, locking the doors and not opening them until everyone’s best friends again. But until they let me run event catering, I’ll do the next best thing: share the data that shows the classic marketing principles applied to digital media can lead to incredible effectiveness gains.

Targeting was always (mostly) bollocks

The original promise of digital media was laser-focused targeting and hyper-efficient conversion. Everyone got excited about creepy-level personalization. Fast-forward and big adtech’s own data often shows that broad targeting delivers higher ROI, even for performance-heavy objectives. Hand over your assets and the platform will do the rest.

Yet, System1 and Effie’s latest research found that 61% of American and 45% of European marketers still rank targeting in their top three profitability drivers, despite Paul Dyson’s decade-long data project clearly showing that targeting’s profit impact is pretty much a rounding error compared with (wait for it) creativity.

Short-termism on steroids

So what is this elusive ‘creativity’ in advertising all about? It’s not just about big ideas and pretty film. It’s the ability to be distinctive, emotional, entertaining and, crucially, not dull. And then being able to iterate upon that again and again in an interesting and engaging way. Sarah Carter refers to that as the “highest order of creativity,” using it to hammer your strategy into memory.

I’ve done plenty of research on this (probably too much) and it shows that consistent brands – brands that stick to campaigns and iterate within them – generate more profit and business growth. But the allure of engagement metrics and instant attribution has seduced marketers away from emotional, brand-building work and into short-term dopamine chases.

We’ve proven it with data. Looking at 1,250+ campaigns (half led with digital media), System1 and Effie found that campaigns with higher emotional impact (measured via our Star Rating) also report more brand effects. The trend is that both are dropping over time.

Meanwhile, as Meta’s ad revenue has soared, so has marketers’ obsession with short-term campaign metrics. Impressions, conversions, clicks, etc. The data is scarily well correlated.

Skippable, affordable and everywhere

It’s easy to shout ‘causation!’ but it isn’t that simple. You can absolutely build brands on digital. The problem is that we’re using the channels wrong and measuring the wrong outcomes. My favorite example is spreadsheets tracking social campaign engagement rates. In 2025. Really?

This doesn’t mean digital is shit and doesn’t build brand, it means some metrics some marketers rely on don’t work.

In fact, given that a lot of digital media is skippable and has rather affordable reach, the creative dividend here is massive. If you can use creativity to game this system, to work out ways to get more attention and leave a strong impression quickly, you will win where other brands fail.

Lumen has done lots of research in this space. The clearest example is the link between the attention seconds that media gets and the brand lift you get in digital. Showing creative and digital media formats that are higher performers can lead to big brand outcomes in digital.

Tom Roach and Dr Grace Kite have advanced this thinking further recently, showing that you can actually stack these impressions to grow your brand without relying on mega campaigns that perform in the top 10%.

The safe bet: distinctive entertainment

So, how do you create something that works harder? This is where digital media’s supposed weakness (frequency) becomes your superpower.

System1 and TikTok just released The Long and The Short (form) of it, analyzing nearly 1,000 campaigns and their brand lift studies. The takeaway is that the best way to maximize each impression is to create assets that grab attention, leave viewers feeling good and brand early (ideally in the first two seconds).

We call this ‘distinctive entertainment.’ Ads with showmanship that lean into brand assets from the start deliver significantly more branded emotion and attention per impression. That means more brand growth per dollar spent. Music to any CFO’s ears. If any of those guys even listen to music.

We’ve got creative fatigue all wrong

And a final thought on why this matters even more in digital media: the frequency can get rather high in some channels. People seem terrified of frequency as they see view-through rates dropping off. This is a red herring. We found that assets that do manage to entertain and that actually leave people feeling something use frequency to compound their effects. They turn frequency into their advantage, leaving crap ads in the dust.

From first to heavy exposure, sure, we see some attention and emotional brand-building potential drop off. But less for great ads, stacking their effects.

If your creative is strong, familiarity doesn’t breed contempt. It builds memory. Brands such as Compare the Market and Geico know this. Frequency becomes your friend.

Digital didn’t force us to become short-termist. It just made it easier. And marketers are rather lazy.

With mostly skippable, high-frequency digital media and data showing massive differences in brand outcomes based on attention, emotion and branding, creativity has never been more important.

Instead of arguing in separate rooms, we should bring marketing effectiveness thinking together with digital media to show what powerful modern marketing can look like.

Otherwise? I’ll see you at next year’s Mad//Fest. And I’ll be doing the catering.

Andrew Tindall is a senior leader in the advertising industry and SVP of Global Partnerships at System1, where he champions creative effectiveness and evidence-based marketing. Known for his sharp thinking on out-of-home, emotional advertising, and brand growth, he’s become a go-to voice on how creativity and data can work together. With experience across major brands like Diageo and Bacardi, Andrew now helps global agencies and marketers make better ads that actually work, contributing regularly to panels, podcasts, and the occasional punchy LinkedIn rant.

Get in touch with Andrew on LinkedIn.

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