Digital Marketing
September 8, 2026
Written by: Allison Espenlaub, VP of Marketing at AdPipe
Estimated Read Time: 8–9 minutes
The short version. Enterprise brands should evaluate creative analytics platforms on six things: how small a unit of creative the platform measures, whether insights come from your own data or an industry benchmark, how fast insights arrive relative to the campaign, how it handles brand governance, whether insight connects to creative production, and how it fits your stack and pricing model.
Now the longer version, and a scorecard you can steal.
Disclosure first, because it changes how you should read this. I work for a creative analytics platform. So weigh what follows accordingly.
I'm writing it anyway, because I sit on the other side of these evaluations. I watch enterprise teams run them, I hear the questions they ask, and I hear the ones they wish they'd asked six months later. The pattern is consistent enough to be worth writing down.
And the pattern is that most of these evaluations score the demo instead of the method. Which is how teams end up with a tool that answers a question they weren't actually asking.
So, six things I would score. Most of them are not flattering to anybody, us included.
It measures the creative itself as a performance variable.
Not the audience. Not the placement. The asset. Which hook, which pacing, which color, which talent, which three seconds.
Your media dashboards already tell you an ad won. Your brand tracker tells you how people feel about it. Creative performance measurement is supposed to open the asset up and tell you which parts inside it did the work. That's a different job from the rest of your marketing analytics stack, which is why it's a category and not a tab in a tool you already own.
If a vendor cannot describe what their model sees inside your video, you're looking at a reporting layer with new branding.
Because you cannot check the math.
With most enterprise analytics you can audit the thing. A conversion is a conversion. You can trace the pipeline, argue about the attribution window, ask to see the query.
Creative analytics is making a claim about cause and effect inside a piece of content. There's no good way to poke at that in a 45 minute call. So evaluations drift toward whoever built the nicest screens, because the screens are the only thing in the room you can actually assess.
The way out is to stop evaluating the output and evaluate the method. Everything below is a method question.
Ask in the first ten minutes. Answers land in three tiers.
Campaign level. It tells you the campaign did well. You have a dashboard for that.
Asset level. It tells you which video won. Closer, still not useful. You knew which video won. You want to know what to make next.
Scene or element level. It tells you the opening two seconds are losing people, or that the wide establishing shot is dead weight, or that a certain kind of talent outperforms across every placement. That's the only tier that changes what your team does on Monday.
This is the most oversold claim in the category and the easiest to test. Ask for the deepest view they have on a real account. Watch how fast they change the subject.
I think this is the real dividing line, and it's the one I hear asked least.
Some platforms analyze your actual library with computer vision and tie what they see to your actual numbers. Others compare your creative against an industry benchmark set and tell you where you land.
Benchmarks are fun. They are not instructions.
A benchmark says fast cuts perform well in your vertical. Your own data says fast cuts work for your audience, on this placement, until about six seconds, and then they stop. One of those is a stat for a deck. The other is a brief.
Ask it directly. Would these insights be different if you ran them on a competitor's account? If the answer isn't obviously yes, you're buying a research subscription.
Timing is the criterion teams skip and then get burned by.
A post campaign readout is a history lesson. Useful for next quarter, useless for the money you're spending right now. Mid flight insight is a different product, because it means you can kill the version that isn't working and move budget while the campaign is live.
Two questions. What's the real time from an asset going live to an insight you can act on. And how much spend or volume before that read is trustworthy. Nobody volunteers the second one.
If you run creative across a lot of markets and agencies, you aren't only optimizing. You're governing.
Worth knowing that brand analytics means two different things here, and vendors almost never separate them. Some platforms audit the assets you already have and score them against your standards. Others enforce those standards on the work you produce with them, so the rules are locked in at the point of creation instead of caught in a review three weeks later.
Those solve different problems. If you have a back catalog nobody has ever looked at properly, you want the audit. If your problem is a lot of markets making their own versions, you want the guardrails. Ask which one a vendor actually does. Do not let "brand governance" on a slide stand in for either.
This is the one I'd argue about, and also the one where I'm most biased, so discount me and go verify it yourself.
Finding the insight isn't the hard part anymore. Getting it into the next brief is. Most platforms hand you a report and wish you luck. Then someone has to read it, translate it into creative direction, brief a team or an agency, and hope the meaning survives three handoffs and a Friday.
That's where insight dies. Every time.
So ask what happens after the insight appears. Can it become a brief. Can it find the footage that matches what worked. Can your team build the next round without leaving the platform and starting an email thread. I'd score this heavily. Fair warning that it's also what we sell, so pressure test it with vendors who'd answer differently.
Integrations with your ad platforms and your DAM. SSO and permissions. Where your footage lives and who can see it. Whether pricing scales on seats, assets, or spend. What onboarding needs from your team, in hours.
None of it is fun. All of it decides whether anyone is still logging in nine months from now.
Score one to five, weight for your team, compare.
Leave the feature list at home. Bring these.
Show me the deepest insight you have on an account like mine, and tell me what that team did with it.
Is this from my data or a benchmark set?
How long after launch do I get a read I can act on, and how much spend before it's stable?
On brand governance, do you audit the assets I already have, enforce standards on what I produce with you, or neither?
What happens in your platform between the insight and the next round of creative?
Who on my team owns this, and how many hours a week?
Scoring the interface. Screens demo beautifully. Ask what decision that screen produced last week for a real customer and watch what happens.
Leaving the creative team out. Media buyers score these tools on reporting. Creative leads score them on whether the output is usable in a brief. Those scores disagree, and you need both.
Skipping the pilot on your own library. Everyone looks strong on their demo account. Run twenty of your own assets and one real campaign through it. The gaps show up immediately.
Skip the nine month evaluation. Pick one campaign you cannot fully explain. Take it to three vendors and ask each to tell you why it performed the way it did, using your footage and your numbers.
You won't get similar answers. That's the whole test.
And if one of those three is us, hold us to the same scorecard as everybody else!
What is a creative analytics platform?
A creative analytics platform measures the creative asset itself as a performance variable. It analyzes what is inside a video or image, things like hook, pacing, color, talent, and CTA placement, then ties those elements to performance data so you know which parts of the asset drove the result.
How is creative analytics different from marketing analytics?
Marketing analytics measures the delivery around the asset, things like spend, placement, audience, and conversion. Creative analytics measures the asset itself. Most enterprise stacks are strong on the first and have nothing on the second, which is why teams can tell you an ad won but not why.
What should enterprise brands look for in creative performance measurement?
Granularity first. A platform that reports at campaign or asset level tells you what you already know. Look for scene level and element level measurement, because that is the only depth that tells your team what to make next.
Do creative analytics platforms handle brand consistency?
Some do, and brand analytics means two different things depending on the vendor. One approach audits the assets you already have and scores them against your brand standards. The other enforces those standards on the work you produce in the platform, so versions come out on brand rather than getting caught in review. Ask which one you are being sold, because they solve different problems.
When should campaign insights arrive to be useful?
Mid flight. Insight that lands after the campaign ends is a history lesson, useful for planning next quarter but not for the budget currently in market. Ask any vendor how long after launch you get a read you can act on, and how much spend is needed before that read is stable.
Does creative analytics replace my agency?
No. It changes what you brief them with. Your agency gets better inputs, and the strategy work still sits with them. Any vendor positioning itself as an agency replacement is selling you a bigger change than the one you are evaluating.
How long should a creative analytics evaluation take?
Weeks, not quarters. Pick one campaign you cannot fully explain, take it to three vendors, and have each analyze it using your footage and your numbers. Running your own assets through a short pilot separates the field faster than any number of demos.
I lead marketing at AdPipe, a Creative Intelligence platform.
September 3, 2026
