Skip to main content Skip to main content
Flashtalking Logo
Search
Solutions
Solutions
Creative Personalization
Social
Ad Serving
Audience & Identity
Creative Intelligence
Verification
Partners
Platform
Platform
Create: Design & Build
Automate: Version & Feeds
Activate: Distribute & Traffic
Iterate: Learn & Optimize
Industries
Industries
Automotive
CPG
Financial Services
Retail
Sports Betting
Travel
Video Gaming
Resources
Resources
Creative Showcase
Reports
Events
Blog
Press Releases
Press Coverage
About
About
Diversity, equity, and inclusion
Careers
Contact Us
Newsletter
Support
Support
Help Center
Flashtalking Training
Strategic Planning Workshops
Contact Us
Log in to Flashtalking
Home
Solutions
Solutions
Flashtalking unleashes the power of creative to make media work better.
Creative Personalization
Real-time relevancy at scale across social, open web, and CTV
Social
Advanced automation in a unified platform
Ad Serving
Independent, unbiased delivery across open web and CTV
Audience & Identity
Cookieless measurement and personalization
Creative Intelligence
Insights connecting content and performance
Verification
Holistic brand protection
Partners
Integrations across the ecosystem
Platform
Platform
Flashtalking connects the silos across teams, processes, and technology.
Create: Design & Build
Make it beautiful. Creative Tools
Automate: Version & Feeds
Make it scale. Creative Versioning Creative Labels
Activate: Distribute & Traffic
Make it connect. SocialOpen Web & CTV
Iterate: Learn & Optimize
Make it better.Operational Dashboards & Reporting
Industries
Industries
We build trusted partnerships with global advertisers through our deep industry expertise.
Automotive
CPG
Financial Services
Retail
Sports Betting
Travel
Video Gaming
Resources
Resources
Catch up on the latest events, announcements, and thought leadership from the Flashtalking team.
Creative Showcase
Best-in-class omnichannel executions and client success stories
Reports
Industry trends and best practices
Events
Upcoming engagements and featured recordings
Blog
Insights and thought leadership from our team
Press Releases
Official company announcements
Press Coverage
Industry publications featuring Flashtalking
About
About
Flashtalking is part of Mediaocean, the mission-critical platform for omnichannel advertising.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion
Diversity of thought and experience makes us stronger.
Careers
Explore open roles and discover how we bring our passion to work every day.
Newsletter
Keep up-to-date with news, industry trends, events, and more.
Contact Us
We want to hear from you!
Support
Support
As your trusted partner, count on us for strategic and creative services, platform certification, and more.
Help Center
Task-level eLearning, articles, on-demand webinars, and technical content
Flashtalking Training
Self-paced credential programs and instructor-led training
Strategic Planning Workshops
Collaborative sessions to strategize across brand, creative, and media teams
Contact us
  • Addressing the creative-media gap

    Flashtalking
    08 Sep 2023
    Flashtalking
    08 Sep 2023
    In a world where creative drives over 50% of campaign performance, over-indexing on media at the expense of creative causes a serious imbalance.

The advertising pendulum 

The story of the advertising industry over the past 50 years is mainly about the ever-shifting balance of power between creative and media. Throughout much of the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s—the “Mad Men” days—advertising was about the “Big Idea.” Creative ruled the day, and the Don Drapers were the stars. The pendulum was entirely on the creative side of the ledger, while the media teams were relegated mainly to a fulfillment role.

In the mid-1990s, large holding companies broke out media buying into separate agencies to consolidate buying power and gain more leverage with media sellers. In so doing, they created higher margins and increased profits, casting media execs in the industry limelight. 

Then, around the turn of the century, the internet ushered in an age of digital marketing. With its goldmine of data for targeting, measurement, and optimization, media teams were attracting increased attention from advertisers. With the introduction of programmatic around 2010, the pendulum swinging away from creative only accelerated. By the latter half of the 2010s, the media teams were the new industry stars, while the creative team suddenly found itself playing a fulfillment role.

 

An imbalanced ecosystem

Any system that leans too far in one direction comprises results. This can be seen in everything from politics and religion to diets and fitness regimes. The same is true for advertising. Over the last decade, programmatic advertising has the industry obsessing over bids, budgets, and targeting. However, as programmatic has matured, many advertisers have come to realize that bids and targeting are just ways to define media price, but media value comes from what creative message you place and its ability to resonate and drive customer response. 

Over that same period, with the focus heavily on media, the gap between a brand's message (creative) and how it is experienced by consumers (media) has grown. Consider the time, effort, and resources media planners spend optimizing reach and frequency across their strategic audiences in an increasingly fragmented media ecosystem. And after all that, what do we do? Nine times out of ten, we show a standard piece of creative that needs to be more relevant to engage the audience. Running poor-quality creative sabotages the media team's best efforts to optimize campaign performance.

 

The “creative-media gap”

In a world where creative drives over 50% of campaign performance, over-indexing on media at the expense of creative causes an imbalance that we call the “creative-media gap.” This gap has produced immense challenges in advertising—and solving it represents the most significant opportunity for growth.

The creative-media gap manifests itself in three distinct ways: 

  • Siloed teams, processes, and technology, leading to inefficiency with escalating production costs and slow go-to-market 
  • Consumers becoming numb to repetitive and irrelevant messaging that doesn’t speak to their needs, preferences, and desires 
  • Advertisers lacking any creative intelligence on what creative attributes resonate across audiences, channels, and context 

Savvy advertisers who feel this pain are looking for new solutions—Creative Ad Tech—to solve this gap in an integrated way as part of their core tech stack. 

 

Creative is the next frontier 

After years of hyper-focused media ad tech, advertisers are now looking for something different: an ad tech stack focused on unleashing the power of creative to make media work better. That’s where we come in. 

Flashtalking is the leading independent ad tech stack for creative relevance and activation across all digital marketing channels. We are focused on bridging the creative-media gap in three key ways:  

  • Automation: Connecting the silos across teams, processes, and technology platforms 
  • Relevance: Connecting the brand message to the person, place, and moment 
  • Intelligence: Connecting creative insights to action 

 

Flashtalking enables a converged, omnichannel workflow with a consistent toolset to activate across devices, formats, and ecosystems. And, perhaps most importantly, our Creative Ad Tech stack integrates with your existing platforms and partners across creative and media. 

 

Learn more

If you are interested in bridging the creative-media gap for your brand, reach out to us. Keep reading to discover how to enable great creative in the next blog post in the series.

Schedule a demo with Flashtalking

CONTACT US
logo
Solutions
Creative Personalization
Social
Ad Serving
Audience & Identity
Creative Intelligence
Verification
Partners
Platform
Create
Automate
Activate
Iterate
Industries
Automotive
CPG
Financial Services
Retail
Sports Betting
Travel
Video Gaming
Resources
Creative Showcase
Reports
Events
Blog
Press Releases
Press Coverage
About
DE&I
Careers
Newsletter
Contact us
Support
Help Center
Training
Workshops
Solutions   
Solutions
Creative Personalization
Social
Ad Serving
Audience & Identity
Creative Intelligence
Verification
Partners
Platform   
Platform
Create
Automate
Activate
Iterate
Industries   
Industries
Automotive
CPG
Financial Services
Retail
Sports Betting
Travel
Video Gaming
Resources   
Resources
Creative Showcase
Reports
Events
Blog
Press Releases
Press Coverage
About   
About
DE&I
Careers
Newsletter
Contact us
Support   
Support
Help Center
Training
Workshops
Privacy Policy
Your Privacy Choices
Modern Slavery Policy
Opt-Out
Publisher Certification
Submit Vulnerability Report or Bug
©2023 Flashtalking