Creative and analytics teams are drastically different disciplines, driven by different personalities and workflows, which means that merging them takes purposeful planning. The timeline is the first big challenge. The creative team looks ahead, creating new campaigns to be launched in the future while analytics teams review the past, examining what happened and translating that into recommendations that apply to the creative team’s work. Additionally, the speed at which the creative team moves is another difficulty, making the task of stepping into the communication flow feel like stepping into a four-lane highway. But, it’s worthwhile! Data-driven creative performs better due to increased relevance and enhanced understanding of customer behavior. see more at: https://www.jschmid.com/blog/left-brain-creative/

A new study from Interpublic’s Magna and the IPG Media Lab reinforces the idea—embraced by the industry for a number of years now—that ad personalization is one of the best techniques to help brands deliver more relevant and effective ad experiences. The study focused on three key ad categories—auto, retail and finance—and includes responses from more than 6,000 participants. Testing was conducted on two audience types: brand target demographics and high-value audiences based on people-based IDs created by precision targeting platform Kinesso. Six types of data sources for personalization were tested: demos, past purchases, location, life events, search terms and precision messages for high-value audiences. The study found that most forms of ad personalization had some value and that higher levels of personalization were more effective at shifting difficult-to-move metrics.

Trade (Consumer Book) Revenues Up 3.1% for Month of November, and Down 1.7% Year-to-Date The Association of American Publishers (AAP) today released its StatShot report for November 2025, reflecting reported revenue…