Why the Algorithmic Era Demands Creative Distinctiveness, Not Just Efficiency
When more than half of all media is purchased and optimized by algorithms, brands risk blending into what one agency leader calls a “sea of sameness” – the same signals, the same optimization targets, the same look.
That convergence is forcing marketers to rethink the relationship between performance media and creative strategy. If the algorithm is doing the buying, the only variable left to differentiate is the work itself.
“Once you put an ad in an ad unit space, the number one factor that determines the performance of that media is creative,” said Emily Anthony, evp, head of planning, iProspect, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
The danger of optimizing to vanity metrics
Anthony’s warning comes as U.S. programmatic advertising continues its march toward full automation. According to Emarketer’s H2 2026 forecast, programmatic direct now accounts for 76.3% of overall U.S. programmatic spend, with agentic AI systems increasingly shaping planning, buying, and optimization.
But automation without intention can backfire. Anthony argued that optimizing toward metrics like click-through rate can deliver volume without value.
“That can lead you into a place of, you know, perhaps a high volume but low quality of traffic to your website or brand visibility,” she said. “We’re still continuing to see not really having a high degree of sophistication or intelligence going into how do you optimize for brand, how do you optimize for customer lifetime value in an algorithmic era.”
First-party data and unified media systems
The solution, according to Anthony, starts with first-party data. Brands that understand their customers and keep that data organized can feed better signals into both planning and buying.
“Really understanding your customers, getting organized and clean with the data that you have around your customers, and then fueling that back both into how you plan and strategize as well as how you buy media and design your creative,” she said.
The other piece is what iProspect calls a “unified media system,” which means planning paid, earned, and owned media together rather than in silos. “You’re thinking about how you’re planning media and creative in tandem,” Anthony said.
Creative and performance are no longer separate disciplines
The convergence Anthony described is playing out across the industry. In April, parent company dentsu launched dentsu.connect, an agentic AI-powered operating system designed to unify creative, production, media, and experience within a single workflow. In June, it introduced Idea Builder, an enterprise generative AI platform for creative developed with Google Cloud.
The broader market is moving in the same direction. Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey found that CMOs are allocating an average of 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI initiatives, though only 30% report mature AI readiness.
Meanwhile, the stakes for getting it wrong remain high. ANA’s programmatic transparency benchmark estimated $26.8 billion in global media value lost each year to programmatic inefficiencies.
Better targeting, better measurement, better creative
Asked where marketers should focus to improve results, Anthony declined to pick a single lever.
“Better targeting, better measurement, better creative. All three of those components are part of what we’re thinking about when we design those integrated comms plans and we’re designing a unified media approach,” she said.
The implication is that the algorithmic era does not make any of these disciplines less important. It makes them more interdependent.
“What we have to design is distinctiveness,” Anthony said. “And that’s where this marriage of performance media and creativity really becomes critically important.”
You’re watching “Code and Craft: Redefining Creativity for Performance”, a Beet.TV Leadership Series, presented by Equativ For more videos from this summit, please visit this page.
When more than half of all media is purchased and optimized by algorithms, brands risk blending into what one agency leader calls a “sea of sameness” – the same signals, the same optimization targets, the same look.
That convergence is forcing marketers to rethink the relationship between performance media and creative strategy. If the algorithm is doing the buying, the only variable left to differentiate is the work itself.
“Once you put an ad in an ad unit space, the number one factor that determines the performance of that media is creative,” said Emily Anthony, evp, head of planning, iProspect, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
The danger of optimizing to vanity metrics
Anthony’s warning comes as U.S. programmatic advertising continues its march toward full automation. According to Emarketer’s H2 2026 forecast, programmatic direct now accounts for 76.3% of overall U.S. programmatic spend, with agentic AI systems increasingly shaping planning, buying, and optimization.
But automation without intention can backfire. Anthony argued that optimizing toward metrics like click-through rate can deliver volume without value.
“That can lead you into a place of, you know, perhaps a high volume but low quality of traffic to your website or brand visibility,” she said. “We’re still continuing to see not really having a high degree of sophistication or intelligence going into how do you optimize for brand, how do you optimize for customer lifetime value in an algorithmic era.”
First-party data and unified media systems
The solution, according to Anthony, starts with first-party data. Brands that understand their customers and keep that data organized can feed better signals into both planning and buying.
“Really understanding your customers, getting organized and clean with the data that you have around your customers, and then fueling that back both into how you plan and strategize as well as how you buy media and design your creative,” she said.
The other piece is what iProspect calls a “unified media system,” which means planning paid, earned, and owned media together rather than in silos. “You’re thinking about how you’re planning media and creative in tandem,” Anthony said.
Creative and performance are no longer separate disciplines
The convergence Anthony described is playing out across the industry. In April, parent company dentsu launched dentsu.connect, an agentic AI-powered operating system designed to unify creative, production, media, and experience within a single workflow. In June, it introduced Idea Builder, an enterprise generative AI platform for creative developed with Google Cloud.
The broader market is moving in the same direction. Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey found that CMOs are allocating an average of 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI initiatives, though only 30% report mature AI readiness.
Meanwhile, the stakes for getting it wrong remain high. ANA’s programmatic transparency benchmark estimated $26.8 billion in global media value lost each year to programmatic inefficiencies.
Better targeting, better measurement, better creative
Asked where marketers should focus to improve results, Anthony declined to pick a single lever.
“Better targeting, better measurement, better creative. All three of those components are part of what we’re thinking about when we design those integrated comms plans and we’re designing a unified media approach,” she said.
The implication is that the algorithmic era does not make any of these disciplines less important. It makes them more interdependent.
“What we have to design is distinctiveness,” Anthony said. “And that’s where this marriage of performance media and creativity really becomes critically important.”
You’re watching “Code and Craft: Redefining Creativity for Performance”, a Beet.TV Leadership Series, presented by Equativ For more videos from this summit, please visit this page.
