Creative is the new targeting: how to ensure your performance media actually performs

In a world where CPMs are on the rise, algorithms are increasingly hungry for new assets, and marketing teams are expected to do more with less, getting paid social right is harder than ever. Meta estimates that across its platforms, 54% of ad spend is wasted on creative that isn’t fit for purpose. Yet we know that social is no longer just a place to scroll—it’s where people discover, evaluate, and buy.

Serving the right creative to the right audiences at scale is now table stakes. But with finite resources, how can brands consistently deliver high-performing, diverse ads at pace? For years, creative was considered the cherry on top—the final flourish to a perfectly planned media campaign. But in today’s algorithm-led advertising ecosystem, that’s no longer the case.

Creative has become the most important variable in campaign performance. It doesn’t just carry your message—it determines who sees it, how they engage, and whether they act. In a landscape shaped by platform algorithms, performance thresholds, and increasingly diverse user behaviours, the quality, format and relevance of your creative now define your media effectiveness.

That’s why we’ve teamed up with Meta to reframe the conversation. Creative isn’t an afterthought or an aesthetic layer—it’s targeting.

Together we’re unpacking why most creative underperforms, how to use data without killing creativity, what smart diversification looks like in practice, and how tools like AdStudio can help scale performance-focused creative that delivers.

Download the full whitepaper below.