Beyond the Algorithm: How Data Driven Creative Wins at Auction
by Ellad Kushnir Matarasso
Apr 19, 2026
Insights from Advertising Week Europe 2026
In an era where media buying is almost entirely automated and traditional targeting signals are fading, what is the final lever left for marketers to pull? According to Elad Brindt Shavit, Chief Business Officer at Alison.ai, the answer is the creative itself.
In a high-energy session at Advertising Week Europe, Elad sat down with Ruth Mortimer, Global President of Advertising Week, to discuss the shift from manual production to data-backed video generation and why “creative” is the most powerful signal in the modern auction.
Read along to see how the conversation went.
The Shift from Keywords to Creative Signals
Ruth Mortimer: Media buying is pretty much automated these days. Why are we suddenly talking about creativity as the core focus?
Elad Brindt Shavit: It’s not actually a sudden shift, platforms like Meta, Google, and TikTok have been signaling this for years. However, privacy regulations and the loss of tracking signals forced everyone to move up the funnel.
When platforms deprecated demographics and keywords, creative became the core signal. Think about your own behavior: if you pause for three seconds on a video about a Bali vacation, your entire feed becomes Bali. The algorithm is now highly impacted by the creative elements you interact with. Creative is no longer just “the ad”, it’s the data that tells the algorithm who you are and what you want.
The $500 Million Efficiency Gap
Ruth: You mentioned a study regarding media spend that uncovered some staggering numbers. What did you find?
Elad: At Alison.ai, we analyzed close to 200 brands and 90,000 creatives, representing over half a billion dollars in spend. We found that 55% of media spend goes toward underperforming creatives. Neither the brands nor the platforms are happy about this. More than half of the money being pumped into the machine is essentially being wasted on content that doesn’t resonate. It is an inefficiency that everyone is desperate to solve.
Decoding the “Creative Genome”
Ruth: You use a term that sounds almost biological: the “Creative Genome.” What does that mean for a marketer?
Elad: We treat creative like a massive dataset. Every video or image is translated into over 5,000 different categories. Just like DNA, we break an ad down into its smallest elements:
- Should the product be on a table or a shelf?
- Which voiceover tone works best?
- Is a specific color driving the conversion?
Instead of relying on “gut feeling,” we use science to correlate every single bit of the creative with actual performance. We’re moving from guessing to validation.
Ruth: Does this scientific approach risk losing the “human brilliance” or the intuition that makes advertising great?
Elad: Not at all. I don’t want everyone creating the same ads. But we can use data to validate ideas. Often, creative decisions, like where a logo is placed or what background color is used, aren’t even “gut feelings”; they’re just random choices made by a designer. By using data to handle those “black and white” decisions, we free up humans to focus their brilliance on the big, disruptive ideas.
The Agency Comeback in the Age of AI
Ruth: Agencies have had a tough few years with headcount losses and brands moving work in-house. Where do they fit into this new landscape?
Elad: I actually believe today marks the comeback of the agency. For years, media buying was the “expertise,” but now anyone with a credit card can do it. Similarly, Agentic AI has made generating creative very easy. But because it’s so easy, the market is flooded with noise.
You need the “adult in the room” to analyze thousands of data points. You need experts who can leverage the Creative Genome to turn insights into execution, using things like Smart Briefs to move 90% faster. Agencies that embrace creative analytics will be more necessary now than they were five years ago.
Building the Modern Marketing Org
Ruth: What does a successful, modern marketing organization look like right now?
Elad: It’s all about breaking down silos. I still see brands where the media team is on one floor and the creative team is on another, and they never speak. In a modern setup, everyone. creative, media, and BI, needs to be in the same room looking at the same dataset.
The media team should be able to go to the creative team and say, “We need to swap the yellow coat for a green coat, not because of a personal preference, but because the data shows green performs better for our ROAS.”
The Final Word
Ruth: If there is one takeaway for everyone to think about later today, what would it be?
Elad: Creative is the most important factor in giving you better auction opportunities. We all need to be obsessed with creative and the data behind it. It doesn’t matter if you are the creative team, the media team, or the CFO, everyone must understand that turning creative into data is the only way to win in 2026.
Ready to stop guessing and start decoding your brand’s creative DNA? If you’re tired of leaving your ROAS to chance, it’s time to bridge the gap between human brilliance and hard data.
Click here to watch the full interview with Elad and Ruth to dive deeper into the future of creative analytics. And if you’re ready to see how Agentic AI can transform your production into a high-performance engine, book a demo with Alison.ai today.
