AI in Creative Management: Why AI Alone Isn’t the Answer

An overwhelming majority (92 percent) of mobile game advertisers – 50,000 of them in total – rolled out fresh ad creatives in the first quarter of 2023.

Tech giants such as Google and Meta are racing to incorporate AI-powered technologies into their creative management to keep up and produce ad creatives at lightning-speed pace. And why wouldn’t they? AI is expected to influence 90 percent of all ad revenue by 2032 — that’s over 1.3 trillion US dollars.

With this commitment to developing such creative management technologies, how will AI in mobile advertising work? And will it be enough to stay on top in the advertising arena?

1. For Creatives That Convert Better

How do messaging, logo size, fonts, colors, imagery, CTA button sizes, or formats impact an ad campaign’s performance? Gone are the days when user acquisition managers sift through historical data. Artificial intelligence will remove human bias and tell them which ad creative stands the best statistical chance of success.

Machine learning algorithms can analyze vast amounts of data, including user preferences, demographics, and browsing behavior. The end result is an automated process that enables app advertisers to craft highly relevant ad creatives that convert. This removes the need for tiresome A/B testing.

Iterative AI-driven optimizations and analyses mean that, instead of gathering test data over several weeks – and then analyzing it – creative management teams can invest their time and money on other impactful tasks. These include brainstorming unique creative ad elements and keeping on top of privacy developments or developments in app users’ behavior.

2. For More Seamless, Scalable, and Safer Ad Delivery

Once the creative exists and is launched, it then has to scale and be optimized. According to IBM, 65 percent of marketing leaders say they struggle to scale their creative approach. By tracking campaign data – such as CTR, conversions, and CPI – AI algorithms can make iterative adjustments to enhance an ad’s effectiveness and ensure creatives are continuously optimized and scalable. 

Brand safety concerns have also emerged due to the growing popularity of programmatic media buying. IAB Europe in fact established earlier this year that 67 percent of mobile advertisers consider brand safety a key priority. Artificial intelligence ensures brands’ ad creatives always appear in safe and suitable ad spaces by identifying mismatches between ad creatives and a publisher’s in-app content before the ad is even served.

3. For Combatting Ad Fatigue

AI ad creatives address ad fatigue by ensuring that users are served fresh and engaging content. That is, diverse ad formats as well as variations on creatives and messaging.

With the help of AI, advertisers can time these ads to perfection, too. AI-driven systems can predict when certain mobile users will interact better with ads – and with which kinds of ads – and adjust the frequency of ad delivery accordingly. This reduces the number of irritated users and ensures advertisers maintain a positive and trustworthy brand image.

Google VP of Ads Jerry Dischler talks about this trust in his recent blog post discussing Google’s new AI features: “Building user trust is vital to the long-term durability of the ad-supported internet.”

AI Won’t Give You the Edge Over Your Competitors

What AI will do is boost the efficiency of advertisers’ ad creative output and remove the manual work needed to analyze and serve ad placements – at the right place, at the right time, to the right users.

What AI alone can’t do is guarantee that advertisers will start outperforming their competitors. With 50 percent of all businesses globally already adopting AI in some form, it’s not a novelty anymore and will become the status quo over the next few months. 

Artificial intelligence is only as good as what it already knows and as good as the creative management teams using it. Even if it has the power in creative management to predict performance based on data, there are some predictions AI systems can’t make, such as user behavior trends and the latest privacy updates. AI will also not be able to produce original ideas at scale or tap into emotional intelligence as creative management teams can.

Integrating the top AI systems into creative management workflows still requires input from a human expert, who is able to navigate rapid – and often unpredictable – developments when it comes to:

• app user behavior
• privacy
• ethical implications of AI
• the technical side of AI
• UA strategy trends

Not only do creative management teams need to consider these developments as individual entities – they must understand how all of these components will interact and impact each other. There is a bigger picture.

AI in Creative Management: What’s the Verdict?

App advertisers will be able to leverage AI to remove the guesswork from ad creation and create compelling ad campaigns that yield maximum ROAS, retention, and conversion rates. Artificial intelligence still struggles to match the depth, subtlety, and originality or spontaneity of human creativity. However, integrating these technologies alone will not be enough to keep creative management teams ahead of the rest. 

While AI can take care of the data-driven elements of ad creation, someone must be there to focus on overcoming hurdles such as market volatility, privacy, competition, and brand messaging. Creative management demands an agile workforce with a deep understanding of how AI algorithms and humans behave – and will behave. That will make the difference.