Winterberry – Demystifying Creative Intelligence

In this report, Winterberry Group analyzes the current state and emerging trends in defining Creative Intelligence. Two decades of findings from Analytic Partner’s ROI Genome have contributed to the compiled research, revealing that to maximize commercial impact, advertisers must integrate creative elements into their optimization and measurement programs. While still largely undermeasured, the report provides a new framework to link creative asset-level data to brand outcomes, performance KPIs, and ultimately, sales impact.

• Creative Intelligence remains marketing’s most underutilized growth driver.
• Creative ranks second in driving marketing effectiveness, while spend ranks first.
• A unified and consistent measurement standard should be applied across the full marketing lifecycle (short-term, mid-term, and long-term).
• Transforming Creative Intelligence into data allows marketers to track a wide range of inputs across creative assets, media, and audience dimensions.
• With the rise of generative AI and large language models (LLMs), creative development is faster and more adaptive, requiring structured data and effective governance.