Exploring the future of measuring creative impact and financial performance
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Why measurement transforms creative from cost to outcome
A global B2B company measured all their creative data. Standardized it. Result: $2.4M investment, $7.5M outcomes, 3.13x multiple. Here's what happens when creative speaks the language finance understands.
For 40 years, research has proven creative drives measurable value. Yet creative budgets keep getting cut. The answer isn't that creative doesn't work. The answer is: creative lacks financial credibility.
A deep dive into why the creative industry has been systematically underfunded despite overwhelming proof of effectiveness, and how Creative CPM finally solves the financial language problem that's plagued creative for three decades.
Jon Evans, Eat Big Fish / Adam Morgan, System1, and Peter Field proved it. The IPA proved it. And yet the industry still hasn't reorganized around what it knows. Here's why—and what changes when creative performance becomes financial infrastructure.
From the collaborative research by Evans, Eat Big Fish / Adam Morgan, System1 and Field showing $189B annual waste on dull creative, to decades of IPA effectiveness data, we've known for 30 years that better creative wins. Yet creative fees collapsed 75% while media spend exploded 7x. The missing piece? Financial infrastructure that translates creative quality into CPM language.
Media Mix Modeling optimises where to put the fuel. It cannot measure the efficiency of the engine. The evolution from MMM to Creative Mix Modeling is not a nice-to-have -- it is the missing layer.
MMM tells you where to spend. It can't tell you what that spend is worth. Inspired by an exchange with Avinash Kaushik, this white paper makes the case for Creative Mix Modeling -- the complementary layer that turns creative from an unquantified residual into a measurable financial variable.
You cannot consolidate your way to synergy when your underlying financial model rewards labor hours rather than market leverage.
A 14% headcount drop. Graduate recruitment collapsing. Holding companies merging brands as a spreadsheet fix. The $600B creative industry is trying to solve a first-principles measurement problem with an org chart. Re-engineer focus to Yield: Total CPM.
Published by the CMO Council
The CMO Council published our methodology for establishing a market-based valuation standard for creative communication -- bridging the measurement gap between creative production costs and media outcomes.
We track the pipe.
We ignore the liquid.
Why no one has solved creative measurement
(and what would).
A white paper on the complete solutions landscape -- MMM, Brand Lift, Attribution, Creative Testing, Attention Metrics, the IPA Databank -- and why none of them answer the question that matters.
Every existing approach measures a proxy. MMM measures channels, not creative. Attribution tracks journeys, not ideas. Brand Lift measures recall, not return. Here is what a real solution requires -- six design principles, historical precedent, and the gap that remains open.
An open letter to the buyers and sellers of creative work. The next three years will determine whether creative communication revives or diminishes. History suggests there is only one path that works.
The creative communication industry has three possible futures. Contraction without adaptation. Institutional rescue. Or measurement-led revival. Every other undervalued discipline that revived itself followed the same pattern. Here are all three paths—and the evidence for each.
Every CFO can quantify operational efficiency. Every CMO can quantify audience reach. But ask for the specific financial return on a $500k creative production, and the room goes silent.
For too long, we've been measuring the 'container' (the media) with precision while treating the 'value' (the content) as a black box. Creative CPM is the navigation tool designed to bridge that gap.
After a century of performance-based value and three decades without it, creative communication might finally be ready for its second evolution
The industry finally squeezed the last cent out of production costs. But as the price of creation hits zero, we're left facing the reality that cost-cutting was never the same thing as creating value.