How to align your media and creative strategy

A third of a large global CPG company's paid social budget was running in rewarded view campaigns at an average frequency of twelve. The creative was good, brand-building work with the distinctive assets up front, and almost nobody watched it, because a rewarded view is a person tolerating an ad to unlock something else, and at frequency twelve the same tolerant people were completing it again and again. The creative was doing its job, the media plan was buying a different one, and neither team had done anything wrong by its own standards, which is why "our media setup is fine, we just need assets" is so often true of each half and false of the pair. Media and creative have to be decided together, for a mechanical reason.

Creative moves CPM in both directions

The brand has a goal, what it wants to happen in the world, and the platform has an objective, the campaign setting that tells the auction which action to buy, and How to read paid social results keeps the words apart, because every objective changes what a good ad looks like. Meta's auction ranks each ad on the bid, the estimated action rate, the probability this person takes the action the campaign is optimised for, and ad quality, and the middle factor is where objective and creative meet. Under a reach objective an ad more people stop for raises the estimated response and wins impressions at a lower CPM, better creative, cheaper media. Meta's own test data, from the platform that sells the media, has the winning creative in 235 brand lift tests delivering a 13% lower cost per ad recall than the average of the other creatives in the same test. Under a conversion objective the direction reverses, an ad that converts better sends the system after the most contested people in the auction, so CPM rises and cost per outcome falls. Meta's A/B data across 14,780 creative tests has the winner at 21% lower cost per website conversion. Same lever, opposite effect on the CPM line, so creative and objective are chosen as a pair, and CPM without the objective beside it is noise.

One ad, one job

The rewarded view account was a job mismatch, and the more common version is the hybrid ad, asked to build the brand and harvest the sale at once. It fails twice, mechanically before it fails creatively. Optimise it for conversions and the platform delivers it to the slice of the market already in motion this week, not the future buyers the brand half of the brief was written for. Run it under reach and the call to action interrupts the story for people not in market, completion falls and the auction reprices the ad upward. Binet and Field, in the IPA Databank of agency-submitted cases, found brand building and activation work best planned and measured as distinct tasks. Default to one job per ad, and make the exceptions prove themselves.

We read attention, we do not buy it

The mirror-image mistake arrives once the watched rates are on the dashboard, the temptation to set the campaign objective to ThruPlay or video views so the platform optimises for the metric the creative is judged on. Do not. The auction then goes looking for the people most likely to watch anything, reach narrows to the already attentive, and the light buyers who are most of the market go unreached, efficiently. The creative is optimised for attention and the platform objective stays set for the brand's goal, reach for brand building. Watched rate is read per ad every week to decide what to pause and brief, it is never what the media plan is told to buy. Nielsen's marketing mix meta-analysis for Meta across 119 CPG brands found the optimisation goal explained almost none of the variance in sales impact, frequency, placement and reach did, which is the point. The objective does not produce the outcome, it decides who the creative is shown to.

The sequential view

The counter-position is how most large advertisers are organised, and it is not careless. The media agency sets the objectives, budgets and flighting first, because they hold the data, and creative is briefed against that plan. Mark Ritson's bothism is the sharper version, brand and performance are both needed, so plan for both. Both is right. Sequential is the problem, because an objective set before the creative exists means the creative is written for a job it has not been told about. The answer is not to merge the teams, the media agency makes the calls and should. It is to decide the pairing together, one ad, one job, one objective, at the brief, and to protect it in the weekly review, because hybrid briefs grow back. That review needs an owner for the creative half of the account, and Why creative needs managing as actively as media makes the case.

What to do with this

Audit the live ads against one question, which job is this doing, and give each one answer. Give demand creation ads a reach objective, judge them on stop rate, watched rate and the lift study, and give them the larger share of the spend, because the not-yet-buying are most of the market. Never set a brand campaign's objective to ThruPlay or video views to chase the number, read it instead. Report CPM only with the objective beside it, and read the account effectiveness first, then performance, then efficiency. The two only work when decided together. Media creates the opportunity to see your ads. Creative determines whether they work. Why creative needs managing as actively as media is the next read, because deciding the pair once is not the same as managing it every week.

Questions

Our media agency sets the objectives. Why would creative change that?

It should not change who sets them, it should change when. The media agency keeps the objectives, the budgets and the flighting, and the data to make those calls. What changes is that the pairing of ad and objective is decided at the brief, together, so the creative is written for the job the plan is buying and the plan is buying a signal the creative is built to earn.

In practice that is one conversation before the brief is issued and one line in the weekly review, which job is this ad doing and under which objective. Better creative lowers the media agency's CPMs under a reach objective, so the outcome is shared.

Why not optimise for ThruPlay if that is what we measure?

Because the platform would then find the people who watch anything, and reach would narrow to them. A video views or ThruPlay objective tells the auction to buy completed plays, and the cheapest completed plays come from people who complete everything, who are a small and unrepresentative slice of the market. The light buyers a brand campaign exists to reach are exactly the people such a setting leaves out.

Keep the objective on reach, optimise the creative for attention, and read watched rate per ad to decide what stays live. The metric is a reading of how the creative is doing, not an instruction to the auction.

Can one ad do brand and performance at once?

Rarely, and it should have to prove it. The two jobs want different people, different objectives and different measures, and an ad asked to do both is usually delivered to the audience that least needs one half of it. Binet and Field's finding is that brand building and activation work best planned and measured as distinct tasks, not that one ad can never do both.

Default to one job per ad, run the hybrid as an exception against a holdout, and keep it only if it moves both measures on its own evidence.

Sources

• Meta Business Help Centre, "About ad auctions". Ranking on bid, estimated action rate and ad quality. Platform documentation, Meta sells the media.
• Meta, "Creative and Media Excellence", circa 2023. Winning creative at 13% lower cost per ad recall across 235 brand lift tests (April 2021 to 2022) and 21% lower cost per website conversion across 14,780 A/B tests (April 2021 to April 2022), winner against the average of the other creatives in the same test. Meta internal test data, platform interest.
• Nielsen custom MMM meta-analysis commissioned by Meta, "Global CPG Execution Best Practices To Maximize Meta Performance", 119 CPG brands, 2019 to 2021, as presented in Meta, "Creative and Media Excellence" and "Demystifying attention". Relative importance of frequency, placement, reach and optimisation goal in predicting sales impact. Modelled, commissioned by Meta.
• Les Binet and Peter Field, The Long and the Short of It, IPA, 2013. Brand building and activation as distinct effects, best planned and measured as distinct tasks. IPA Databank of agency-submitted award cases, trade body.
• Mark Ritson, "'Bothism' is the cure for marketers' fascination with conflict", Marketing Week, September 2020. Brand and performance as a false choice. Trade press column.
• A large global CPG company, anonymised. Roughly a third of paid social budget in rewarded view campaigns at an average frequency of twelve, from the account's own reporting.