Winterberry Group Documents Burgeoning ‘Creative Intelligence’ Market for Advertising

-New 2026 report examines growth in creative spend that is fueled by CI data- and analytics-driven solutions, projected to grow annually by 22.6-percent from 2025-2028, rising to nearly $11.5 billion-

With speed and focus, U.S. and U.K. brands and their advertising partners are planning and implementing creative intelligence (CI) solutions and platforms to take greater control of their creative investments — with the power to transform more than 60 percent of total creative spend in the next decade, according to a new report from Winterberry Group, a strategic consulting firm. The allure of CI is its ability to enable personalized, continuously optimized content that clearly demonstrates the predictive power and measurability of creative effectiveness and its impact on marketing campaigns.

This CI layer is being built alongside the media and audience intelligence methodologies that have helped shape the effectiveness, planning and targeting of data-driven advertising and marketing during recent years, the Winterberry Group report said. The report is titled “Creative Intelligence: Adopting & Operationalizing Creative Intelligence.”

“Over the last 24 months in particular, the market has seen rapid adoption of solutions grounded in creative data and analytics,” Bruce Biegel, executive chairman and senior managing partner, Winterberry Group, one of the primary authors of the report. “These solutions enable marketers, from pre-testing through activation and optimization, to derive actionable insight from how individuals and households interact with creative and content – at the asset level, at the campaign level, and holistically across media channels – unlocking new gains and creative effectiveness and operational efficiency.”

“Programmatic and mobile advertising each took approximately five years to reach broad adoption,” Biegel said. “Creative Intelligence is expected to achieve market penetration in just three years, through 2028 and has a high probability of being a critical component in the majority of ad tech and martech solutions over the next five years.”

“Specifically, CI takes creative – often labeled as ‘non-working’ media – and translates it to ‘working’ media because important engagement metrics are derived from their deployment and analysis,” said Michael Harrison, CEO, Winterberry Group, said. “These metrics may include ad-level performance metrics, sentiment analysis, and increasingly audience reaction and attention-based metrics.” When fully integrated with media and audience intelligence platforms, creative intelligence enables creative assets to be optimized on-the-fly using machine-learning and AI [artificial intelligence] tools and techniques.

Among industries that have adopted creative intelligence the fastest are consumer packaged goods (21 percent of respondents surveyed for the report), and the retail sector (20 percent), with automotive (14 percent) and financial services (9 percent) also making investments, the study found.

“The next phase of growth is expected to be driven by deeper integration with digital paid media, enabling consistent messaging and optimization across the full spectrum of addressable channels,” Biegel said. “The immediate impact is seen principally in paid social environments, where native platform tools are now deployed. Programmatic display, digital audio, video and connected TV are next poised for growth. Linear and converged television will follow over time.”

The newest findings build on a previous 2025 Winterberry Group study which defined creative intelligence as the ability to collect, structure and analyze creative decisions against performance data to continuously optimize assets for effectiveness and engagement.

Other key findings from the report include:

• DRIVERS OF CI INVESTMENT | Demand for creative intelligence is being driven by multiple factors: dynamic creative optimization (31 percent of survey respondents); personalization (23 percent); and measurement and performance tracking (15 percent).
• TOP TECH DEPLOYED IN CI | Dynamic creative optimization platforms (22 percent); creative intelligence platforms (21 percent); and creative data (encompassing visual composition, messaging hierarchy, emotional tone, packing, brand element placement and format specification, 20 percent) are the most oft-cited technologies in play. Large-language models, real-time personalization engines, and AI-powered audience segmentation and insight platforms follow.
• INTEGRATING AUDIENCE AND CREATIVE DATA | Audience intelligence typically resides in customer data platforms (CDPs), while creative assets are held in digital asset management (DAM) platforms. Creative intelligence unites these two – bringing together segment definitions, behavioral signals, identity resolution, and asset retrieval to enable better delivery and performance measurement among prospects and customers.
• CREATIVE ASSETS EFFICIENCIES | Research reveals that anywhere from 40 percent to 50 percent of produced creative assets are never activated. AI-enabled pre-testing through CI can eliminate substantial wasted production, representing billions in potential savings for marketers.
• USE CASES FOR CREATIVE INTELLIGENCE include pre-testing strategic planning and asset development; in-flight, real-time activation and optimization; post-activation measurement and learning; agentic AI applications; and measurable outcomes across the sales funnel and customer journey.
• NEW ROLES FOR MARKETING PRACTITIONERS | There is a gap of marketing technologists who are focused on creative systems, as well as creative engineers who “combine analytical rigor with creative sensibility.” Meanwhile, creative strategists must rely increasingly on data-driven insights, and media planners and buyers must learn to equate creative performance inseparable from media effectiveness.
• A NEW AGE OF ACCOUNTABILIY IN CREATIVE SPEND | Over the next decade, Winterberry Group expects that creative intelligence will be applied to more than 60 percent of all annual creative and content spend.

“At Adobe, we believe creativity is most powerful when it’s informed by intelligence,” said Sam Garfield, head of digital strategy — CMT, data and AI platforms, Adobe. “Winterberry Group’s research reinforces the growing importance of creative intelligence bringing together content, data, and AI to help brands deliver more relevant, personalized experiences while driving measurable business impact.”

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“We’re at an inflection point where creative intelligence has become the most powerful driver of advertising performance. Accelerating adoption among global brands confirms this,” said Laura Demond, CEO, Smartly. “It’s creative intelligence that gives marketers the ability to understand, predict, and optimize creative impact with the same rigor once reserved for media. With agentic AI, it becomes an always-on advantage for brands.”

“Creative intelligence adoption accelerated in 2025, as brands, agencies, and platforms moved projects from pilot to scaled adoption, propelling category growth by more than 50 percent,” said Alex Collmer, founder & executive chairman, Vidmob. “Looking ahead, this growth is set to accelerate even faster, as AI becomes embedded across marketing workflows and data-driven creative intelligence becomes the fuel powering smarter, more effective campaigns.”

“As the advertising ecosystem becomes more complex and automated, creative has emerged as the most powerful driver of performance,” said Max Barer, head of content optimization solution, AppsFlyer. “AppsFlyer’s creative solution brings intelligence and accountability to creative decision-making, helping brands understand what truly drives engagement and outcomes. With the right creative intelligence in place, marketers can move faster, optimize with confidence, and unlock sustainable growth at scale.”

“Everyone intuitively knows that creative is vital to performance and brand equity,” said Nancy Smith, president and CEO of Analytic Partners. “But without measuring and quantitatively evaluating creative, organizations are left with significant blind spots. After more than 25 years of measuring advertising effectiveness, I’m confident that applying a commercial lens to creative evaluation represents one of the largest untapped opportunities for brands.”

For this research report, Winterberry Group surveyed more than 120 creative and media agencies across the US and UK, complemented by in-depth interviews with marketers, agencies, and technology providers.

Winterberry Group’s “Creative Intelligence: Adopting & Operationalizing Creative Intelligence” report was made possible by Analytic Partners, Smartly, VidMob, Adobe, APR and AppsFlyer.