What is 'Creative Performance' in Marketing?

Performing great in your advertising strategy is not just about the media buying anymore. Creativity is heavily underrated - and under-assessed - as a marketing tool and performance driver.

I'll go into depth about what Creative Performance is and how it's measured with the Creative Performance Score. 

Ask yourself: How would you rate your marketing team's Creative Performance? Feel free to reach out - I'd love to hear your input.

 

Jacob Wolf

 CRO / Zuuvi

Quick Guide:

• What is Creative Performance?
• Creative Performance vs. Performance Creative
• So What's Most Important: Creativity or Data?
• How do You Measure Creative Performance?
• The 3 Pillars of Creative Performance
  • Cost of Production
  • Speed
  • Performance
• 3 Real Life Cases: Creative Performance Score
• Empirical Data

Google - the world’s largest performance engine has stated that 70% of your ad effectiveness is attributed to the creativity of your ads.

We consume more content everyday and the demand for more content is constantly increasing. That requires marketers to work faster, be more agile - and more creative to stand out in the crowd.

What is "Creative Performance"?

Creative Performance is about creating high-quality ads that don’t just look great but are produced efficiently and at scale. 

It means streamlining the production process so your team can deliver impactful content quickly and consistently, keeping up with demand while driving real results. 

When you optimise creative performance, your ads are able to really push your brand further.

How this can happen can be summed up in 3 elements, that are a part of the Creative Performance Score.

1. Quality: To capture attention and make a lasting impact, your ads need to be more creative than your competitors’. It’s about creating content that doesn’t just look good but truly resonates—stopping the scroll, sparking curiosity, and leaving an impression.

2. Quantity: In today’s multi-channel world, one ad won’t cut it. You need a steady stream of fresh content to cover all your channels and formats. Scaling your creative production means you’re always ready to meet your audience where they are, with the right message at the right time.

3. Speed: The faster you get from concept to live ad, the stronger your edge. When you’re quick on the draw, you stay relevant, responsive, and just a step ahead of your competitors. Speed isn’t just about working fast; it’s about making your whole production process efficient and agile.

We’ll get back to exactly how to measure these 3 elements later in the article.

‘Creative Performance’ vs. ‘Performance Creative’ 

Performance Creative and Creative Performance may sound similar, but they represent two distinct approaches in the world of creative marketing, each with its own focus and value.

Performance Creative

Some people think of Performance Creative as "old wine in new bottles". And I agree - I mean, tailoring ads based on their performance data is pretty basic stuff, isn't it? Assessing your data and using it to improve and edit your ads based on their performance can be considered a cornerstone of marketing. And slapping a fancy name on something basic, doesn't reinvent the concept.

Respectfully.

"Performance Creative" has also been criticised of neglecting many metrics and measurements that may be difficult to assess in cold numbers - such as creative performance. 

But the thing is, it is difficult to measure creativity.

That's why we also need data to be able to say something truly insightful about creative work.

So What's Most Important: Creativity or Data?

And if so much of your ads’ success depends on your creative expertise, you should spend more time on deeper, creative metrics than just surface-level performance metrics.

Let’s be clear – performance metrics are definitely something you need to keep in mind. But it's time to go deeper and start digging into the creative side of things! The data you can pull from your creatives’ performance is what really moves the needle on improving these more generic performance metrics (yay 🙌).

By focusing on what makes your visuals, headlines, and messages stand out, you’re not just improving one campaign – you’re building a strategy that makes every ad work harder.

By analysing your ad creatives, you can uncover which call-to-action phrases yield the highest click-through rates, determine whether lifestyle images or product shots drive better engagement, identify whether videos or static images perform best, and discover which ad placements like stories or feeds resonate most with your audience.

However, there is a crucial question that most marketers don’t ask when analysing ad performance:

How Do You Measure Creative Performance?

That is the question that I think should be asked. And I think we need methods that and measurements that force advertisers to look much closer at the creative marketing process than before.

Picture this: You’re a CMO, a Digital Marketing Manager, or a Performance Specialist. When it comes to your performance, your boss probably has one thing in mind – results. That means purchases, leads, and anything that drives commercial value.

But how do you measure the effectiveness of your design team? Or the overall efficiency of your marketing crew?

Enter Creative Efficiency Score.

The 3 Pillars of Creative Performance

Creative Performance is measured in 3 different pillars, from which the Creative Efficiency Score draws its data - and it is time to put numbers to what can seem like a “soft” metric.

Creative efficiency isn’t just an idea – it’s measurable, trackable, and benchmarkable. It combines ad performance (quality), cost of production (cost), and time-to-market (speed) into a score that gives you a clear view of your creative impact.

Your Creative Efficiency is reflected by the cost of your production, your time-to-market and your performance:

Cost of Production

How much does it cost you to produce 1 ad creative?
Knowing your cost of production means getting the most out of your creative budget without sacrificing quality.

When you track what each ad costs to create, you can spot where to streamline and spend smarter - freeing up resources to keep producing fresh, impactful content that moves the needle.

Speed

How's your production speed?
Time-to-market is crucial. The quicker you launch, the more likely your brand stays top-of-mind and a step ahead of the competition.

With Zuuvi, your designers can create ads in just 3 phases, through in-house ad creation that allow for collaboration with marketers within the platform itself. This lets you skip the time-consuming review-and-approve-processes that traditional ad creation require. 

Performance

How well do your ads perform?
Performance isn’t just about being seen – it’s about meeting your goals. Whether it’s brand awareness, traffic, or conversions, your performance metrics tell you how effectively your ads hit the mark.

By measuring these three elements of creative performance, you get a solid, data-driven view of your ad’s impact. It’s a game-changing way to refine your campaigns and boost your creative output – so you can keep raising the bar.

Weighing these three factors individually can help you figure out where you can optimise: If your time-to-market is super quick, and your cost of production is low, while you're still not getting high creative performance, that may say something about your ad quality (creative quality).

That might be a good indicator to look at your creative briefs, creative tools and how your ad creatives are produced - there might be space for optimisation.

If this is the case, your design team may be lacking creative options and freedom, halting their creative process.

Let a Zuuvineer demonstrate our code-free platform for you. No coding means more time to be creative... which eventually means higher ad quality. Voila.

3 Real Life Cases: Creative Performance Score

Company #1 - Automated Setup Across Multiple Markets with Multiple Ad Messages

Cost of Production

The first set of collected data comes a company with a larger, automated setup active in multiple markets. Going through the three pillars, let's start by taking a look at their cost of production.

The company creates 500 new unique ad creatives every month. They have an automated DCO setup, meaning their inhouse tool creates the output dynamically. The designer and copywriter spends around 10 hours creating new ad templates and new ad texts. They spend €3.000 on the tool.

This means their cost per creative is 8€. This gives a Cost Efficiency Score of 92 / 100.

Speed of Production

The company is able to automatically live-update their creative, meaning the company spends 7 days on average from brief to live ads.

This gives them a Speed of Production Score of 77.4 / 100.

Performance

Their primary marketing objective with their display campaigns is traffic, meaning the indicative KPI is CTR.
Their average monthly CTR is 0,12%.

This gives them a Performance Score of 24 / 100.

Combing the 3 results, the company is now able to calculate their Creative Performance Score from our tailored formula.

This company's Creative Performance Score is 64.5, putting them in the upper right quartile of the graph below, proving their cost and speed of production is excellent.

But what is really interesting is the fact that the company is now able to pinpoint the areas they should seek to improve in. As reflected by the size of their "bubble" below, their performance score (24 / 100) could be increased considerably.

This means they need to produce more creative, higher-quality creatives in order to bring up their overall Creative Performance Score.

Let's take a look at a second example below the graph.

Company #2 - Outsourced Ad Production Setup

Cost of Production

This company creates 10 new unique ad creatives every month. They have outsourced their ad production to an agency, meaning they spend 3 hours on communication and review-and-approve processes with the agency. They pay the agency €2.000 to help them produce new ad creatives.

This gives them a cost of €230 per Ad Creative resulting in a Cost Efficiency Score of 1 / 100 (ouch).

Speed of Production

The feedback loops and bottlenecks of having to consider many stakeholders means the company spends 17 days on average from brief until the ads are live.

This gives them a Speed of Production Score of 45.2 / 100.

Performance

Their primary marketing objective with their display campaigns is traffic, meaning the indicative KPI is CTR.

Their average monthly CTR is 0,4%. This gives them a Performance Score of 80 / 100.

Combining these three results, the 2nd company gets a Creative Performance Score (CPS) of 42.1.

So what insights can be drawn from this company's case?

The larger bubble shown in the graph above showcases Company 2’s excellent Performance Score - 4x higher than the market average CTR for display ads of 0.1%, and far surpassing the first company. But their CPS is still lower, dragged down by slower speed and significantly higher production costs.

Company 2 should look into ways to decrease their production costs. If they were to scale their creative output right now, it would come at a sky-high expense. If they want to scale their ad output smartly, cutting production costs is their ticket to success.

Company #3 - You!

You only need to know the following 3 metrics: Cost, Speed, Performance.

Once you have these numbers, plug them into our custom-made Creative Performance Score Calculator to see which areas you could improve in.

Empirical Data Behind Creative Performance Score

We have asked +50 CMOs and decision makers about their performance across the 3 input variables. Based on their responses, these are the benchmarks and numbers we use for the calculation:

• A high cost of production is above €100.

• 1 hour spent “costs” €100.

• A slow time-to-market is longer than 31 days.

• A high CTR for display campaigns is 0,50%.

• A high viewability is 80%.

Take your 'Creative Performance' to the next level

Here’s the bottom line: knowing the unique value each part of your creative process brings is essential for hitting your goals.

The more you understand your production flow, the clearer it becomes just how much each element impacts your ad performance. With these insights, you’re equipped to tweak, refine, and elevate your strategy to make sure every ad resonates, drives engagement, and boosts results.

A well-tuned creative process doesn’t just support your KPIs — it powers them.