Ad Creative Performance Statistics for 2026: Sales Lift, CTR, Video Formats, DCO, AI Creative, and Industry Benchmarks

In 2026, ad creative is the single most documented driver of advertising effectiveness. Research from NCSolutions and Nielsen, based on nearly 450 campaigns across digital and TV formats, confirms that creative quality contributes 49% of the incremental sales lift generated by advertising more than reach, targeting, recency, and brand equity combined. Google’s own data places that figure even higher, at 70%. A parallel study by Advertising Week and Nielsen found that when creative is strong, it accounts for up to 89% of sales lift in digital campaigns.

Yet the gap between what creative actually drives and what marketers believe it drives is striking. A February 2024 Advertiser Perceptions survey of 122 marketers found that brands and media agencies estimated creative’s contribution to sales at just 19% less than half of the 49% measured in the NCSolutions science. Instead, marketers overestimated the contribution of targeting, which NCSolutions measures at 11% of incremental sales but which survey respondents ranked at 23%.

The consequences of this misalignment are measurable. Marketing Week’s Language of Effectiveness survey, supported by Kantar, found that 33.2% of marketers have no method at all for tracking creative effectiveness. Even among those who say they can measure it, the proportion has been declining year over year. Meanwhile, the tools and evidence base for optimizing creative have never been more robust. Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) boosts CTR by 32% on average. AI-optimized creatives deliver up to 2x higher click-through rates than manually designed versions. Personalized ads are 54% more engaging and 45% more memorable than non-personalized equivalents. And on video, 30-second ads on CTV achieve a 95.92% completion rate effectively guaranteeing full message delivery to every viewer who sees the impression.

This article compiles over 70 ad creative performance statistics for 2026, drawn from more than 30 distinct primary sources. Data is organized across 10 thematic sections covering creative’s contribution to sales lift, format and channel performance, video ad benchmarks, dynamic creative optimization, AI-generated ad creative, personalization effects, audience and behavioral data, native and display creative, industry-specific findings, and geographic patterns. All figures are drawn from publicly available data published within the last two years.

Scope and Methodology

Includes only publicly available ad creative performance statistics relevant for 2026.
Based on the latest figures published within the last two years.
Sources include primary research, first-party platform data, institutional studies, and industry reports.
Each statistic is listed separately with its original source and study context.
No estimates, forecasts, interpretations, or recommendations are included.

Key Ad Creative Performance Statistics for 2026

Creative quality contributes 49% of the incremental sales lift generated by advertising, more than any other single factor including reach (14%), brand (21%), targeting (11%), and recency (5%), based on a meta-study of nearly 450 CPG campaigns by NCSolutions and Nielsen cited by Marketing Charts.
Google states that creative accounts for 70% of campaign success in brand advertising, with media accounting for only 30%, based on a disclosure cited by ANA.
When creative is strong, it accounts for up to 89% of sales lift in digital advertising campaigns, while weak creative results in lower overall sales lift regardless of media investment, based on research published by Nielsen.
80% of marketers identify creative quality as the key driver of marketing effectiveness, based on a survey cited by Advertising Week.
Marketers underestimate creative’s contribution to sales at 19%, less than half the 49% measured by NCSolutions science, while they overestimate targeting’s contribution at 23% versus the measured 11%, based on an Advertiser Perceptions survey of 122 marketers in February 2024 cited by Westwood One.
33.2% of marketers have no method at all for tracking creative effectiveness, based on Marketing Week’s Language of Effectiveness survey supported by Kantar cited by ANA.
Dynamic creative optimization (DCO) boosts CTR by 32% on average across programmatic campaigns, based on data cited by Marketing LTB.
AI-optimized creatives deliver up to 2x higher click-through rates compared to manually designed versions, based on data cited by Amra and Elma.
Ads with storytelling elements increase brand recall by 85% compared to non-narrative formats, based on data cited by Marketing LTB.
Interactive ads such as quizzes, polls, and sliders generate 41% higher engagement rates than passive formats, based on data cited by Zebracat.

Creative Contribution to Sales Lift Statistics

The MAGNA Media Study reports that creative quality drives 56% of the impact on purchase intent across digital advertising, consistent with Nielsen’s finding that creative contributes 56% of sales lift specifically for digital campaigns, based on data cited by Advertising Week.
Kantar’s analysis places creative’s contribution to campaign-driven sales lift at 49%, while also finding that paid media overall contributes only 25% of total brand impact, with the remaining 75% coming from earned and owned touchpoints, based on data from Kantar.
Among CPG campaigns specifically, strong creative delivers sales lift 2.5x higher than weak creative, and when creative is strong, it is the dominant driver of in-market performance, based on research published by Nielsen.
Creative-driven performance gains across programmatic campaigns are estimated at 30 to 50% improvement in key metrics including CTR, engagement, and conversion rates, based on analysis of five academic and industry studies compiled by Thunder Experience Cloud.
Omnichannel campaigns report 3.5x stronger brand lift than single-channel campaigns, based on data cited by Zebracat.
Campaigns using ad creatives that load in under 2 seconds deliver 39% more clicks than slower-loading creatives, based on data cited by Zebracat.
Ads with a single call-to-action outperform ads with multiple CTAs by 19% in conversions, based on data cited by Zebracat.
High-frequency ad exposure above 5 impressions per user leads to a 22% drop in ROI for most campaigns, based on data cited by Zebracat.

Video Ad Format Performance Statistics

Video ads under 15 seconds achieve a 53% higher completion rate compared to ads over 30 seconds, based on data cited by Amra and Elma.
Six-second ads deliver 60% of a 30-second ad’s total brand impact, and 15-second ads deliver 80% of the equivalent 30-second ad’s effectiveness, based on research by WARC and TVision cited by MNTN Research.
On CTV devices, 30-second ads achieved the highest video completion rate of 95.92%, followed by 15-second ads at 93.88% and ads of 10 seconds or less at 90.4%, based on the Innovid CTV Advertising Insights Report 2024 cited by Marketing Charts.
On CTV, ads longer than 90 seconds saw video completion rates fall to 32.44%, a steep decline from the 85%+ rates recorded for all other durations up to 60 seconds, based on the Innovid CTV Advertising Insights Report 2024 cited by Marketing Charts.
CTV ads boast completion rates in the 90 to 98% range on average, compared to YouTube ads averaging 20 to 40% completion and social video ads often falling below 30%, based on data cited by SEO Design Chicago.
A 15-second CTV commercial achieves approximately a 94.5% completion rate, while 30-second CTV ads see approximately 96% completion, based on data cited by SEO Design Chicago.
The average view rate for YouTube ads in 2025 is 31.9%, with the average cost per view (CPV) at $0.026 and average CPM at approximately $9.29 based on an analysis of $14.3 billion in ad spend, based on data from Store Growers citing Adzoola.
Short-form video content accounted for 22% of YouTube’s total ad revenue in 2025, up from 15% the prior year, and 62% of brands now allocate more budget to YouTube Shorts than to TikTok or Instagram Reels, based on data cited by Store Growers.

Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) Statistics

82% of advertisers reported using DCO as part of their digital advertising strategy in 2024, up from 60% in a 2014 survey that asked if marketers planned to include creative optimization in 2015 plans, based on data from Demand Local.
The global DCO market was valued at $871.2 million in 2024 and is projected to reach $2.26 billion by 2034, a compound annual growth rate of 10.28%, based on a market report cited by Demand Local.
99% of agencies consider DCO significant in their marketing strategies, with 45% ranking it as “very significant,” based on a 2024 survey of agencies by Digiday and Clinch cited by Segwise.
Platform-specific DCO implementation in mobile app advertising produced install-per-mille (IPM) lifts of up to 33% on ad networks and up to 65% on social platforms, alongside Day 7 retention gains of 17% for gaming apps, based on the State of Creative Optimization Report 2025 analyzing 1.1 million video ad variations across $2.4 billion in ad spend cited by Segwise.
Personalized DCO campaigns deliver 5 to 8x ROI improvements over generic messaging, and McKinsey research shows that personalization can lead to a 10 to 15% revenue lift, with variations from 5 to 25% depending on the industry, based on data cited by Improvado.
Criteo’s DCO platform, which analyzes over 120 shopper intent signals per impression, can boost CTR by up to 31% compared to static ads, based on data cited by InBeat Agency.
Brands using DCO see 20 to 60% higher CTRs in programmatic campaigns, based on a DCO performance survey cited by Marketing LTB.
Dynamic video creative improves conversion rates by 20 to 70% compared to static equivalents, based on a DCO in video benchmark cited by Marketing LTB.

AI-Generated Ad Creative Statistics

AI usage in creative ad production increased 220% in 2024, reflecting the shift from experimental to essential across video, playable ads, CTV, and ASO, based on the AppLovin SparkLabs Creative Trends Report cited by Single Grain.
Meta’s large-scale ad test using a reinforcement-learned large language model called AdLlama improved click-through rates by 6.7% across a dataset of 640,000 ad versions, based on research cited by Amra and Elma.
Companies actively using AI in marketing campaigns see 20 to 30% higher ROI, based on data cited by Amra and Elma.
Some businesses have reported a 50% lift in ROAS after adopting AI-generated ad creatives, based on data cited by Amra and Elma.
Ads perceived as AI-generated may reduce trust, with one survey finding a 17% drop in premium rating, a 19% decline in inspiration, and a 14% fall in purchase intent among audiences who identified ads as AI-created, based on a survey cited by Amra and Elma.
Nielsen launched expanded campaign effectiveness capabilities in December 2024 in collaboration with Realeyes, adding attention measurement and AI-powered creative evaluation to its outcomes suite, enabling real-time assessment of what visual elements drive higher attention performance, based on a press release by Nielsen.
Over 70% of marketers value AI predictions for assessing creatives that might otherwise go untested, and over 80% agree that early-stage creative research and consistent testing approaches lead to better campaign outcomes, based on Kantar’s US Media Reactions 2025 report published by Kantar.
40% of marketers identify leveraging generative AI as one of their top three priorities for 2025, while more than half of consumers continue to feel uneasy or distrustful of AI-generated ads, based on Kantar’s US Media Reactions 2025 report published by Kantar.

Personalization and Audience Statistics

Personalized ads are 54% more engaging and 45% more memorable than non-personalized equivalents, based on a Yahoo! research report cited by Thunder Experience Cloud.
Almost 90% of consumers are interested in personalized ads, and 87% say they are more likely to click through a personalized ad, based on IAB research cited by InBeat Agency.
Personalization increases programmatic CTR by 1.5 to 3x compared to non-personalized equivalents, based on a creative relevance study cited by Marketing LTB.
Campaigns are 7x more impactful among receptive audiences, according to Kantar’s finding that matching creative to the right media channel significantly amplifies lift, based on Kantar’s US Media Reactions 2025 report published by Kantar.
58% of U.S. consumers in 2025 are receptive to advertising, up from 47% in 2024, though fewer than one in three marketers are confident they consistently produce channel-tailored advertising, based on Kantar’s US Media Reactions 2025 report published by Kantar.
39% of video ad viewers mute ads by default, but only 22% skip them if captions are included, demonstrating that captioning is one of the highest-impact low-cost creative modifications available to advertisers, based on data cited by Zebracat.
Lo-fi and UGC-style creative approaches now account for 42% of top-spending ads, outperforming polished production in engagement and view time, based on Zero Gravity’s 2025 report cited by Single Grain.
Creator-led content delivers 2 to 3x higher ROI and up to 4x higher purchase intent than traditional ads, based on Kantar research cited by Kantar.

Channel and Format Performance Statistics

Native ads generate 53% more views than standard display formats, based on data cited by Amra and Elma.
Native advertising increases purchase intent by 18% and enhances brand affinity by 9% compared to non-native formats, based on studies cited by Amra and Elma.
Interactive programmatic ads have 2 to 4x higher engagement rates than static banners, based on data cited by Marketing LTB.
Mobile display ads account for nearly 70% of all display ad impressions, based on data cited by Amra and Elma.
Display ads optimized for mobile convert 44% better than desktop-first creatives, based on data cited by Zebracat.
Rich media and interactive display ads achieve CTRs of 0.15% to 0.3%, significantly higher than standard banner CTRs of 0.05 to 0.12%, based on data from AI Digital.
Out-of-home (OOH) advertising delivers a 13.3% increase in ad awareness compared to digital media, TV, and CTV, based on a five-year study conducted by Kantar and Clear Channel Outdoor.
Cross-channel campaigns improve ROI by 42% compared to single-channel campaigns, based on data cited by Marketing LTB.

Revenue and ROI Impact Statistics

Video ads increase brand recall by 71% compared to display ads, which show only a 45% recall rate, based on data cited by Zebracat.
Landing pages with embedded videos see a 53% higher conversion rate than text-only pages, based on data cited by Marketing LTB.
64% of consumers say they have made a purchase after seeing a video ad on social media, based on data cited by Zebracat.
Product-focused video ads drive 42% more conversions than lifestyle-based video ads, based on data cited by Zebracat.
A/B testing of video ads improves click-through rates by 25% on average, based on data cited by Zebracat.
Brands that refresh ad creative every 4 to 6 weeks see engagement rise by up to 38%, based on HubSpot research cited by Scale With Future.
Campaigns that evolve weekly drive 2.4x higher ROI than static campaigns, based on HubSpot’s 2025 marketing benchmarks cited by Scale With Future.
Brands using AI tools in display creative optimization have seen up to a 40% increase in ROI for video and interactive formats, based on data cited by Amra and Elma.

Industry-Specific Statistics

The automotive industry’s DCO market is a leading adoption vertical, with 72.2% of the $8.9 billion annual U.S. dealer advertising budget now flowing to digital channels where personalized creative is deployed, based on data from Demand Local.
Video marketing generates 93% positive ROI for automotive marketers, and video viewers show 1.81x higher purchase likelihood, based on data cited by Demand Local.
Health and wellness ad spend in Q1 2025 increased approximately 9.4% versus the prior year but revenue grew only 4.3%, with declining conversion rates and rising customer acquisition costs signaling that creative and messaging efficiency became the key performance differentiator, based on Northbeam analysis of consumer brand data published by Northbeam.
Short-form video is the highest ROI ad format for 36% of social media marketers, based on HubSpot research cited by iPromote.
Playable ads outperform traditional video ads by 2 to 3x higher CTR and 30 to 50% longer retention rates in gaming and interactive formats, based on data from ironSource and Liftoff cited by GameWheel.
In 2024, playable ads accounted for nearly 18% of all mobile ad spend in gaming and 9% in e-commerce, based on data from Sensor Tower and Statista cited by GameWheel.

Regional and Geographic Statistics

Hispanic consumers in the U.S. show strong receptivity to online video and social media stories, with over half open to ads on these platforms, far exceeding the general U.S. population average, based on Kantar’s US Media Reactions 2025 report published by Kantar.
70% of U.S. consumers say they are more likely to buy from a brand that engages authentically with their favorite sports or gaming communities, based on Kantar Media Reactions research cited by Kantar.
75% of consumers globally will not purchase from a company they do not trust with their data, and 49% have switched companies due to data practices, underscoring the role of creative transparency in purchase decisions, based on a Cisco report cited by Bannerflow.
Short-form video creative is the dominant ad format globally, comprising 29.18% of all content formats and requiring hooks within the first 3 seconds to overcome decreasing attention spans, based on 2025 analysis cited by Single Grain.
The Asia-Pacific region surpassed North America for the first time in total global ad spend in 2025, contributing 35% compared to North America’s 33% of the $889 billion total, based on data cited by Zebracat.
Mobile video ads are growing 20% year over year globally, and mobile display ad CTR averages 0.9%, higher than desktop’s 0.6%, based on data cited by Marketing LTB.

References

‍

Subscribe to our newsletter

Occasionally, we send you a really good curation of profitable niche ideas, marketing advice, no-code, growth tactics, strategy tear-dows & some of the most interesting internet-hustle stories.

Thank You.
Your submission has been received.
Now please head over to your email inbox and confirm your subscription to start receiving the newsletter.

Oops!
Something went wrong. Please try again.