The state of creative effectiveness in 2024

In 2023, we released our first state of creative effectiveness report aimed at educating brands about the art and science behind creative effectiveness. 

Now an annual report, each year we'll delve into how advertising has evolved in response to global trends and consumer behavior, providing actionable insights for brands to create impactful campaigns.

Read on for a summary of our key findings from this year’s report. 

From our research, we found three main trends and one major observation. Here’s a look into each:

Our research this year reveals that advertisers are increasingly focusing on driving emotion in consumers to make them feel something from their ads. 

Measures of emotion have surpassed pre-pandemic levels, indicating a shift towards more emotionally engaging content, with overall emotion growing by 7%. 

Emotional intensity is flat over the same period, but has gone up and down over the last few years. This grew during March 2019 to 2020, but saw a downwards trend during the pandemic. It has since recovered to the pre-pandemic peak and if the trend continues it will surpass that peak.

Another exciting update is the increase in ads that successfully cue brands — enabling them to drive more sales and brand equity. 

Now, unaided brand recall is approaching pre-pandemic levels. 

We measure this with unaided brand recall in our platform, which looks at the percentage of people who remember seeing the brand being advertised after being shown programming and a series of ads.

In contrast to the other elements we’ve mentioned, ad distinctiveness has shown a decline over the last year, bringing us closer to pre-pandemic levels. 

Ad distinctiveness plays a pivotal role in driving creative effectiveness, as it reflects whether an ad has the ability to stand out and grab attention. If it can’t do this, it will be lost in the clutter of everyday life and unable to improve the mental availability of a brand at key moments. 

That said, brands should take note: Maintaining or enhancing ad distinctiveness is essential for maximizing the effectiveness of advertising campaigns and driving favorable consumer responses.

Our hypothesis for most of these changes we covered is a phenomenon we’re calling “The TikTok-ification of advertising.” 

Consumers are ingesting more content at a faster rate than ever before with the video-forward social media platforms like TikTok. As a result, brands are now creating more digestible, relatable messages, prioritizing brand-building over direct product and sales-driven messaging.

This shift toward emotionally intense messaging that prioritizes long-term resonance over short-term sales impact reflects the changing consumer media habits. As consumers engage with content that resonates emotionally, brands that can connect on this level will likely see greater success in both brand recall and sales uplift.

But brands must also ensure they strike the delicate balance between fostering emotional engagement and ensuring their ads grab attention and prompt meaningful action in order to succeed.

2024 continues to build on the trends of previous years, with a strong emphasis on emotional engagement. However, for brands to truly excel, they must balance this with distinctiveness and the ability to drive consumer action. 

For a deeper dive into our analysis as well as our advice on what brands should do next, download the full report.