Blog
20 April

9 Challenges: You Know You Need Data-Driven Creative When…

Struggling with any one of these marketing or business challenges? Data-driven creative might be the answer for you. Read on to find out!

It’s not always easy to identify – let alone fix – the myriad of challenges that are facing your creative, marketing, and media teams. With so many moving parts, it’s easy to see something like data-driven creative as the panacea…a magical elixir that can make everything right.

OK, you might be doing a double take right now. Why would we, a premier software solution for data-driven creative, tell you that it won’t fix everything?! Quite simply, because it IS a powerful solution when used to address the right challenges and for the right reasons.

For example, you probably already know that your creative can influence over 70% of an ads performance – far more than simply relying on media focus and tweaks. But what is it about that creative that makes it sink or swim? And when and how can data-driven creative help? 

In Spirable’s work with some of the world’s biggest brands and most ambitious newcomers, we’ve identified some of the most common challenges that lead to successful data-driven creative projects. 

These scenarios not only drive brands to get interested and excited about data-driven creative but several are directly related to how readily brands can see return on their investment in this technology. 

Which challenges on this list represent you and your brand?

1 – Capturing attention and connecting with buyers in a noisy marketplace is hard.

One of the main reasons brands look to add data-driven creative to their portfolio is to connect to their audience with more tailored and relevant content. In the past, clever ads might have been enough but as more brands – especially your competition – have improved their creatives, even great ads all start to look the same. The way to stand out now is to get more relevant and personal.

2 – We’ve heard that data-driven video ads deliver better results.

Image ads are great but the movement and storytelling that you can do through video is unique. Of course, video ads typically take longer to create and require more specialist skills to develop. A great tool, however, can not only speed up the development and editing of traditional video ads through templates and layering technology, it can also deliver scalability at a whole new level.

3 – We could use a toolkit of new strategies and options to standout in our marketplace.

While we all might wish for one “magic formula” for our ads, it simply doesn’t exist. What works for one brand or a particular audience might not resonate with another. However, being able to quickly and easily try new data-driven variables, creative combinations, messaging approaches, etc. all in a dynamic, automated way can help you find the magic formula for your brand and audience.

4 – Creating ads for our many products and/or brands at scale is a huge pain in the “ads”.

Data-driven ads aren’t limited to the realm of personalisation. Delivering the amount of creative  needed, for all the digital touch-points channels and formats is becoming increasingly overwhelming. Technology can automate much of this manual work, saving you and your team hours of time and budget. The benefit is not just time and resource savings but also branding consistency.

5 – We use programmatic DCO but that doesn’t help with our social media marketing strategy.

You have to reach your audience where they are which, in many cases, is all over the internet. They might need to see your messages in email, on the web or in their many social media feeds. Recognising that creating a consistent and engaging message across all the digital touchpoints is one of your goals, will set you up to find a solution that can support all the channels that you need.

6 – We have a centralised marketing team and are constantly being asked to deliver ads in multiple languages.

Delivering content in multiple languages is often one of the less glamorous tasks of your creative team – even though it’s vital. This is a perfect case for data-driven creative where templates set the scene and alternate language text can be layered alongside local image and video assets. This frees up your creative team to truly be creative rather than spending their time delivering minor variations.

7 – Video ads are more engaging but the costs of creating lots of video versions is a concern for us.

As a marketing professional, you know that the bulk of the value lives in the initial idea and message. Variations, while critical to the success of a campaign, require days and weeks of effort. These tasks often fall to an overburdened creative team. Sure, they can deliver these variations for testing, localisation, etc. but it doesn’t make the most of their time or skills. Data-driven creative solutions can automate this rinse and repeat process, freeing up your creative resources for their next project.

8 – Doing more with less and streamlining creative processes is an ongoing focus for us.

Turning out new content on a regular basis keeps our audiences interested and engaged – nobody wants to experience ad fatigue, after all. However, teams are rarely given more resources to get the job done. Embracing the template process along with automation and distribution capabilities can help your team to deliver more with the same resources.

9 – Being able to tweak ads on-the-fly to improve performance without going back to the drawing board is important.

One of the biggest benefits of modern advertising channels like social media is how quickly brands can deliver, learn and react to the market. “I wonder if changing the background video will attract more attention.” “Let’s try this call to action and see if it garners the most clicks.” Ideas like these used to require taking ads back to the drawing board. In template based systems, like Spirable, virtually anyone can make changes on demand that look perfect and stay on brand. Not only does this ease the burden on your specialist creatives it also gets changes out the door faster which means faster return on ad spend.


If you’ve spotted some familiar challenges on this list, you’re not alone! Whether you have a strategic initiative to personalise and connect more with your audience or your goal is to automate your creation and distribution of ads, it all starts here.

A great place to continue your research might be in Spirable’s Buyers Guide for Data-Driven Creative. This comprehensive document walks you through everything from assessing your needs to selecting the right solution to proving value. 

Download the free guide HERE