Highly creative advertising ideas are more than twice as likely to receive recognition for effectiveness, according to WARC’s The Health of Creativity 2026 report, which analyses 11 years of award data.
The report examined 6,360 ideas from the WARC Rankings between 2015 and 2025 to assess the relationship between creativity and effectiveness, as well as the characteristics of campaigns that performed strongly on both measures.
Overall, 21% of ideas that received creative awards were subsequently recognised for effectiveness. But among ideas that ranked in the WARC Creative 100, the conversion rate rose to 45%, up from 44% last year.
“Mounting evidence demonstrates how creativity plays a crucial role in driving campaign success. Drawing on findings from 11 years’ worth of WARC Rankings data, we examined whether campaigns recognised for creative excellence have sustained or strengthened their performance edge compared to last year’s findings and what are the current shared characteristics that define the most creative and effective ideas.” said Amy Rodgers, Head of Content, WARC Creative.
Rodgers said the 21% overall conversion rate should be viewed in the context of the wider advertising industry.
“Should the 21% conversion rate be higher?” asks Rodgers. “Perhaps not, when viewed in the context of all the advertising produced. Winning both a creative and an effective award for the same campaign is hard. Factors include the current shift away from brand building to performance, brand size, and resources to measure effectiveness and prepare for strong award entries.”
TV loses ground
The analysis of 167 ideas that ranked in both the WARC Creative 100 and Effective 100 found that television’s role as the lead channel among top-performing campaigns has declined.
TV led 25% of the best-in-class ideas in 2025, compared with 44% in 2018. WARC said television remains strong for reaching large numbers of engaged audiences and for using emotion and storytelling, but no single channel has replaced it as the lead. Instead, campaigns are increasingly spreading their lead role across a broader mix of channels.
Brand building remained the dominant objective. Eighty-five per cent of campaigns in the analysis aimed at brand building, rising slightly to 88% among highly creative and effective work.
Social issues and partnerships
WARC also identified differences in the strategies used by the most creative and effective campaigns.
Nearly half (49%) of highly creative and highly effective ideas significantly over-indexed in their use of social justice issues, including CSR, advocacy and brand activism. Customer experience featured in 42% of top ideas, while strategic partnerships were used by 40%.
The analysis also found that 61% of the best-performing ideas had a measurable impact on sales, while almost half affected market penetration. ROI and revenue were also more strongly represented among award-winning work, with behavioural change emerging as a distinctive metric for top-performing campaigns.
PR value was another notable metric. Seventy per cent of highly creative and highly effective ideas measured PR value, compared with 27% across all cases. The top campaigns also over-indexed on measures such as social media buzz, brand health and search.
Longer campaigns, stronger commitment
The report found that highly creative and effective campaigns tend to run for longer. Thirty-seven per cent of award-winning campaigns ran for at least a year, compared with 15% of typical cases.
Retail accounted for 20% of the 167 most creative and effective ideas, despite representing only 13% of all cases. Food followed with 10%, while technology and electronics, toiletries and cosmetics, and financial services each accounted for 8%.
WARC also found a strong relationship between creative commitment and effectiveness. Creative commitment, a composite measure covering media budget, campaign duration and the number of media channels used, averaged 7.0 among highly successful ideas, compared with 6.0 across the wider dataset.
At the agency-network level, Ogilvy had the highest total number of creatively awarded ideas, with 575, including 84 added this year. BBDO had the highest number of creatively awarded ideas that converted to effectiveness awards, with 137. VML recorded the strongest growth, adding 27 converted ideas. Saatchi & Saatchi had the highest conversion rate among agency networks at 32%, rising to 44% for highly creative ideas.
