Don't Blame The Channel If The Creative Isn't Working

Don Draper wouldn't blame the channel.

News flash: not every digital display ad campaign works. Second news flash: usually the reason for failure is bad creative.

Online advertising offers huge benefits, but it is written nowhere that simply using the channel guarantees a win.  Kunur Patel at Advertising Age did a great piece on the overwhelmingly important role of creative in online ad campaign success.  My customers already know this because I keep saying it: don't blame the channel for the creative's problems.   Garbage in, garbage out.

The results of the study support Dynamic Logic's past research that found creative quality is 50% to 75% responsible for campaign success or failure, Mr. Mallon said. "Other factors like ad size, technology, choice of website and targeting make up the rest of it," he said. "But media people spend most time trying to optimize and measure campaigns, because the creative quality is outside of their control. If they got good ads to begin with, that would help."

While the study's finding that good creative makes for better advertising borders on the obvious, Dynamic Logic's Amy Fayer, research manager of custom solutions, in a statement said the firm still sees a "shockingly large percentage of creative that falls short of its potential."

So where has creative quality control gone astray?

Rei Inamoto, chief creative officer at digital agency AKQA, thinks creative quality suffers because publisher-determined online ad formats are limiting, though sites such as YouTube and NYTimes.com are broadening the potential canvas. On the flip side, myriad banner sizes makes for creative that has to be reformatted again and again to fit into ad constraints that vary from placement to placement.

Full story after the jump.