62% of Marketers Admit They Struggle to Prove the Value of Their Creative

Gain Theory’s latest global study of Fortune 500 CMOs reveals that nearly half (49%) cannot confidently justify creative spend to the C-suite, and only 36% apply the same rigor to measuring creative as media.

Global marketing effectiveness and foresight consultancy, Gain Theory, today published a new report ‘Creative Effectiveness Decoded: The Global CMO Survey,’ a global study, of senior marketing leaders from Fortune 500 brands, revealing that despite widespread confidence in creative performance, most marketing leaders lack the measurement rigor to know whether their creative is truly working.

On the surface, the mood is bullish. 89% of respondents say their creative has been effective or very effective over the last 12 months, 65% rate their ability to measure creative as advanced or very advanced and 63% are confident their approach accurately captures the impact creative has on key business goals.

Beneath that high confidence, however, lies a more complicated reality. 81% of marketing leaders state that creative and media are equally important to business impact, yet only 36% apply the same measurement rigor to both. Nearly four in five (80%) rely on media metrics such as reach and impressions to evaluate creative effectiveness; proxies that don’t show whether creative is driving sales. Almost two-thirds (62%) acknowledge they are investing in media to deliver creative whose true value is unknown to them.

Half (49%) of respondents aren’t confident that they have the data-informed evidence to defend or grow a creative budget with their Chief Financial Officer (CFO) or other finance leaders. One in four (25%) state that their creative budget was reduced in the last 12 to 24 months because they couldn’t make a data-informed business case.

Measurement Confidence Lags in North America

North American marketers report lower confidence in their measurement capability (60% say it’s advanced vs 70% in the rest of the world) are more reliant on legacy approaches like copy/pre-testing (64% vs 42%), and are less likely to cite human and cultural barriers (50% vs 31%).

“For too long, advertising creative has remained a comparative blind spot, while media buying has been subjected to intense scrutiny and sophisticated analytical models. Our research shows marketing leaders feel good about their creative, but can’t prove it’s working, and CFOs are starting to notice. At the end of the day, If you can’t measure it, you can’t defend it. Closing that gap is now the single biggest opportunity in marketing measurement,” said Russell Nuzzo, Global Head of New Media Measurement  at Gain Theory.

The new survey builds on Gain Theory’s landmark 2025 Creative Effectiveness Decoded report, which revealed that 50–70% of a campaign’s sales uplift can be attributed to creativity, yet most brands still lack the analytical rigor to measure and optimise it.

The new report ‘Creative Effectiveness Decoded: The Global CMO Survey’ is
available at gaintheory.com.

Source: Gain Theory

  C-Suite, CFO, CMO, Creative, Media, North America