Social media has become the world’s largest advertising channel, forcing marketers to rethink how they create, deploy and measure campaigns at scale. As brands produce more content across more platforms, the challenge is no longer whether to increase creative output, but how to do so without sacrificing quality, relevance or effectiveness.
A new report by Ipsos and Smartly argues that artificial intelligence, when paired with human insight, offers a clear path forward for social advertising. Rather than replacing marketers, AI is emerging as a tool that can amplify human creativity, streamline workflows and improve campaign performance across the marketing funnel.
Scaling without sacrificing quality
The rise of social media as a dominant advertising channel has transformed expectations around creative production. What was once primarily a performance-driven medium has evolved into a broader engine for brand building, discovery and conversion.
That shift has dramatically increased the demand for creative assets. Global brands are now producing content at unprecedented scale, in some cases increasing output tenfold as they adapt campaigns for multiple channels, formats and audiences. Yet greater volume alone does not guarantee better results.
Ipsos and Smartly contend that higher creative output works only when supported by stronger systems, better data and a more disciplined approach to optimization. Brands that successfully scale creative across channels can improve returns while maintaining effectiveness.
According to Smartly, advertisers using its unified media and creative platform across social channels and Google recorded a 28% year-over-year improvement in return on ad spend, compared with an 18% median increase across Smartly’s broader customer base.
Unifying creative, media and measurement
One of the biggest obstacles facing marketers remains fragmentation. Creative assets are often produced in one system, media is managed in another, and performance data sits elsewhere.
AI is helping bridge those gaps. Smartly’s platform integrates creative production, campaign deployment and measurement into a single workflow, allowing brands to create, test and optimize assets more efficiently.
That integration reduces manual work while improving consistency. Marketers can repurpose long-form content into shorter, platform-specific formats, automate campaign trafficking and generate multiple creative variants tailored to different placements and audiences.
The result is faster execution without compromising quality. Work that once took days can now be completed in hours, freeing teams to focus on strategy, storytelling and higher-value decision-making.
Data-driven creativity at scale
The report highlights how AI is also transforming creative decision-making. Historically, marketers relied on small-scale testing, anecdotal evidence or instinct to determine what worked.
Today, AI models can analyze vast volumes of creative content to identify the tactics most strongly linked to business outcomes. These systems can evaluate entire brand portfolios, revealing which visual, verbal and structural elements consistently drive performance.
For instance, Ipsos found that in beauty and cosmetics advertising, tactics such as product unboxing and vivid imagery correlate more strongly with sales lift than simply showcasing product features. Such insights allow brands to refine their creative playbooks based on evidence rather than intuition alone.
Smartly also incorporates platform-specific best practices, including Google’s YouTube ABCD framework, enabling marketers to assess creative assets before launch. This helps reduce ad skipping, improve watch time and boost overall effectiveness.
Real-time optimization becomes essential
As advertisers increasingly focus on attention and impact rather than clicks alone, real-time evaluation has become critical.
AI-powered scoring tools can now identify likely drop-off points in video ads, recommend edits and rank creative variants before campaigns are fully scaled. These systems analyze elements such as pacing, visual hierarchy, motion and call-to-action placement.
Ipsos Creative|Spark AI, for example, predicts how likely viewers are to remember both an advertisement and the brand behind it. It also pinpoints the creative tactics most often associated with high-performing assets.
This allows marketers to make rapid, evidence-based adjustments—shortening intros, sharpening calls to action or reordering scenes—to improve performance while minimizing wasted media spend.
Empathy remains a competitive advantage
Despite AI’s growing role, the report makes clear that human understanding remains indispensable.
Ipsos research found that advertisements perceived as both highly creative and empathetic deliver 30% greater effectiveness than ads that are creative but lack emotional resonance. Yet only about 10% of ads tested achieve this balance.
The findings underscore the importance of grounding creative strategy in genuine human insight. Campaigns that connect with audiences on a personal level are far more likely to influence behavior.
Ideas that consumers perceive as relevant to “people like me” are 79% more likely to drive brand choice, according to Ipsos’ meta-analysis.
In other words, AI may optimize execution, but empathy remains central to persuasion.
Proof from the market
Several case studies cited in the report illustrate the commercial potential of this approach.
Eventbrite used Smartly’s automation tools to manage campaigns across seven markets, generating 150 ads per market while tripling production speed. The company also recorded a 247% increase in click-through rates.
Similarly, Zalando reduced campaign launch times for localized advertising across 24 markets from 11 hours to just three by using automation and templated workflows.
Spotify, meanwhile, has used automated ad creation, predictive budget allocation and creative optimization to drive incremental conversions while reducing manual workload.
These examples suggest that AI can deliver both operational efficiency and stronger business outcomes when deployed effectively.
Five steps for marketers
Ipsos and Smartly outline a five-part framework for brands seeking to scale social creative effectively.
First, invest in AI-powered systems that connect production, measurement and optimization. Second, build foundational datasets to establish creative best practices. Third, move creative research earlier in the development process to maximize downstream effectiveness.
Fourth, prioritize audience needs by creating content that is empathetic, relevant and distinctively branded. Finally, continuously test and refine assets across platforms, formats and audience segments.
This iterative approach, the report argues, allows marketers to improve both immediate performance and longer-term brand impact.
The future belongs to augmented creativity
The report’s central message is straightforward: the future of social advertising will belong to organizations that combine human intelligence with artificial intelligence.
AI can automate routine tasks, accelerate production and surface powerful insights. But the strategic vision, empathy and creative judgment that drive truly effective advertising remain deeply human.
For marketers navigating an increasingly complex digital landscape, the goal is not simply to create more content. It is to create smarter, more resonant content at scale.
That, Ipsos and Smartly argue, is how brands can move from overwhelm to opportunity.
