Article · By Launch Point · Marketing Services
Most advertising fails quietly. Nobody complains. The ad runs, the impressions get counted, and nobody remembers who it was for.
That’s not a media problem. It’s a creative problem, and it’s the most underpriced fix in local marketing.
The gap between what works and what marketers think works
Research from NCSolutions, now part of Circana, measured nearly 450 campaigns and found creative accounts for 49% of the incremental sales lift from advertising. Brand contributed 21%, reach 14%, targeting 11% and recency 5% [1].
Now compare that with what the industry believes. In a February 2026 survey of 304 marketers and media agencies by Advertiser Perceptions for Cumulus Media and Westwood One, respondents credited creative with just 23% of the effect, while overrating targeting at 22% against an actual 11% [2].
Read that again. The single biggest driver of sales lift is treated as roughly half as important as it is, and the money goes into targeting instead.
You have about a second and a half
The reason creative matters so much is that attention is thin and getting thinner.
Research by Dr. Karen Nelson-Field’s Amplified Intelligence with VCCP Media found that 1.5 seconds of genuine attention is enough to encode a memory, and that 85% of digital ad placements get less than 2.5 seconds of active attention [3].
So the question isn’t whether your ad is good. It’s whether the first second and a half does any work. In the same research, well-branded ads were about 2.5 times more effective in low-attention environments, and brands that failed to use distinctive assets well wasted up to two-thirds of their spend [3].
Most brand assets aren’t distinctive at all
Here’s where local businesses get hurt. Ipsos and Jones Knowles Ritchie tested brand assets with more than 26,000 people and found only 15% were truly distinctive, meaning people both recognized them and linked them to the right brand. Product shapes scored 31%, logos 19%, mascots 16%, slogans 6% and color 4% [4].
A logo in the last three seconds is not branding. It’s a signature on a letter nobody read.
Separate Ipsos work found that high-performing creative used brand assets 52% more often than low-performing creative, while simply mentioning the brand name made almost no difference [5].
Six ways to make an ad worth its media
- Brand in the first two seconds. Not the logo at the end. Your name, your color, your voice, your face, your sound, up front.
- Say one thing. An ad that lists five services communicates none of them. Pick the one that would make a customer choose you.
- Build assets you can repeat. A consistent color, a spokesperson, a tagline delivered the same way every time, a sound. Assets earn their power through repetition, and they fade when you stop using them.
- Write for the channel. A 30-second radio spot, a streaming commercial and a social video are three different crafts. Resizing is not adapting.
- Make the next step obvious. Call, book, visit, get a quote. One action, stated plainly.
- Test before you scale. Run two versions, watch which one moves calls and branded search, then put the money behind the winner.
Why this is worth real money
Kantar, analyzing creative quality against WARC’s return database, found that ads that are both creative and effective generate more than four times the profit [6].
That multiplier is available to a local business at any budget. Creative is the one part of the plan where a smaller advertiser can beat a bigger one, because it isn’t bought by the impression.
It’s also the part most often done alone. LocaliQ’s 2026 small business survey found only 34% of small businesses work with a marketing agency or partner, while 63% now use design tools like Canva [7]. The tools are excellent. The strategy behind what goes into them is where the lift lives.
Want to know if your creative is doing its job? Schedule a Conversation with the Launch Point team, or read the full Integrated Marketing Playbook.
Sources
- NCSolutions (now part of Circana), Five Keys to Advertising Effectiveness, Aug. 2023. https://www.circana.com/post/brand-loyalty-impact-on-sales
- Advertiser Perceptions for Cumulus Media and Westwood One, fielded Feb. 2026, published Apr. 13, 2026. https://www.westwoodone.com/blog/2026/04/13/marketers-vastly-understate-the-sales-effect-of-creative-and-significantly-overestimate-the-impact-of-targeting-3/
- Amplified Intelligence and VCCP Media, Hacking the Attention Economy, May 16, 2025. https://www.amplified.co/insight/vccp-research-amplified-distinctive-assets
- Ipsos and Jones Knowles Ritchie, Be Distinctive Everywhere, June 19, 2023. https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/be-distinctive-everywhere
- Ipsos, The Power of You, Feb. 2020. https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/publication/documents/2024-01/Ipsos_Views_Power_of_You.pdf
- Kantar with WARC, The Art of Proof, Feb. 9, 2023. https://www.kantar.com/north-america/inspiration/advertising-media/the-art-of-proof-how-creative-quality-drives-profit
- LocaliQ, The Big Small Business Marketing Trends Report for 2026, Feb. 2026. https://localiq.com/blog/small-business-marketing-trends-report-2026/