Creative Analytics Explained: Best Tools + Tips to Improve Ads
Creative analytics helps marketers understand which ad images and videos (the “creatives”) drive the best results. By analyzing performance data, you can spot patterns, avoid common mistakes, and refine your creatives for better engagement.
In this article, we’ll cover:
- What creative analytics is and why it’s important
- Top mistakes in creative analytics
- 5 best tools
- Tips and tricks
Let’s start by defining what creative analytics is.
What is creative analytics?
Creative analytics analyzes the visuals, messaging, and design choices that impact engagement to help marketers understand what makes an ad work.
In the past, marketers relied on spreadsheets and custom dashboards, manually pulling data from platforms like Facebook Ads Manager. That worked, but it didn’t always explain why certain creatives performed better than others.
Now, creative analytics tools make it easier to see how different elements impact engagement — like whether shorter videos keep people watching, which headlines drive more clicks, or how background visuals affect conversions.
By breaking down these details, marketers can fine-tune their creatives to boost conversions and make every ad more effective.
A creative analyst plays a key role in this process, using data to uncover trends in ad performance. They identify which images, videos, and ad variations work best, analyze how small design tweaks improve audience engagement, and track what’s working for competitors.
Creative analytics vs. traditional ad analytics
Which type of analytics should you use? Both types of analytics rely on the same data, but they tell different stories. Here’s how they focus on different things:
- Creative analytics dives into how specific creative elements like visuals, messaging, and design affect engagement metrics.
- Traditional ad analytics looks at overall campaign performance using metrics like CTR, CPC, and conversions. It’s great for understanding how well an ad is reaching the right people and driving results.
Traditional analytics shows what’s working at a campaign level, while creative analytics helps explain why it’s working by breaking down the impact of individual creative choices.
When used together, they give a full picture, helping you target the right audience and make sure your creatives actually resonate.
Why creative analytics is essential for advertisers
Running ads without creative analytics is a bit like driving without a map — you might reach your destination, but you’ll waste a lot of time and gas getting there. Instead of guessing what works, advertisers can use data to refine their creatives, scale successful ads, and avoid wasting budget on underperforming content.
Here’s how creative analytics makes a difference:
- Identifies high-performing elements: Creative analytics lets you see which headlines, images, videos, and calls to action (CTAs) resonate most with your audience. You can create ads that take advantage of these insights, helping them perform more effectively since you can put the top-performing elements together.
- Helps scale winning creatives: Creative analytics helps advertisers focus their budget on high-performing creatives, scaling them across different audiences and platforms. You can extend the life of successful ads by identifying the variations that perform best, instead of constantly creating new ones from scratch.
- Reduces ad fatigue and creative burnout: The data from creative analytics can help marketers spot early signs of declining engagement so they can refresh creatives before their performance drops too much. This not only keeps campaigns effective but also prevents you from scrambling to create last-minute replacements.
- Powers A/B testing and experimentation: Creative analytics provides the critical insights needed to run meaningful A/B tests, helping marketers make informed and data-driven decisions rather than relying on trial-and-error design tweaks.
What are the top mistakes advertisers make with creative analytics?
Many advertisers make common mistakes that limit their success. Here’s what to avoid and how to fix it:
- Not testing enough variations: Many advertisers make the mistake of launching a campaign with too few variations, limiting their ability to optimize their ads effectively. To avoid this, it’s best to run at least 5 to 10 variations of your creatives, testing different headlines, images, videos, and CTAs.
- Focusing only on clicks (CTR) instead of conversions: A common mistake is not looking closer at what actually drives results. Prioritize conversion-focused metrics like cost per acquisition (CPA), return on ad spend (ROAS), and post-click engagement. This can help make sure you’re optimizing for real outcomes, not just surface-level engagement.
- Ignoring platform-specific trends: What works on Facebook won’t necessarily work on TikTok, and an ad that performs well on Instagram Stories might flop in the Feed. Avoid applying a one-size-fits-all approach — to improve results, tailor your creatives to each platform and ad placement by paying attention to format trends, aspect ratios, and audience behaviors.
- Not using AI for creative optimization: Manually analyzing ad performance and making creative adjustments can be tedious and time-consuming, even if they’re easy ads to analyze. By using AI-driven creative analysis tools, you can save time, reduce guesswork, and improve overall ad performance.
The 3 best tools for creative analytics
Creative analytics is a great way to make the most of your ad budget. It helps you improve your ad designs for your target audience and ensure they’re engaged with refreshed ads. It’s a good idea to use AI tools that help you analyze creatives quickly — like the tools below:
1. Bestever
If you’re looking for a tool to analyze your ads easily, consider giving Bestever a try.
Bestever’s Ad Analysis Dashboard, located in the Creative Studio, gives you feedback on audience relevance, visual appeal, info density, and CTA strength. And if you upload a video, Bestever uses past performance data with computer vision to do a frame-by-frame analysis so you can get data-based feedback.
This dashboard is a quick way to get concrete insights on your ads, whether they’re images or videos.
Ideal users
Bestever is ideal for marketing agencies and businesses with an ad spend of $5,000 to $20,000 a month, but you can use the tool for free to get an idea even if you’re a small business or individual marketer.
Pricing
Bestever’s Creative Studio is free if you want to create campaigns, generate creatives, analyze your image and video creatives, and experiment.
The Bestever console is where you can find deeper ad analytics. There is a 7-day free trial, then the basic plan starts at $49 per user/month, giving you access to your ad’s performance data and competitor research.
Final Verdict
Bestever is a strong choice if you want to analyze your videos frame-by-frame. The creative analysis dashboard is simple to use and can provide plenty of helpful feedback.
2. AdSkate
AdSkate helps you optimize ads for attention, cultural affinity, and brand awareness with AI-powered insights. It also analyzes engagement trends, audience sentiment, and visual impact to provide you with some data-driven recommendations. And with AI-powered revenue optimization and one-click downloadable insights, you can quickly refine creatives and boost ad performance.
Ideal users
AdSkate is a great fit for marketing agencies and small or medium-sized businesses running multi-platform campaigns, especially those focused on video and display ads.
Pricing
AdSkate does not advertise its prices, but you can book a demo to learn more.
Final Verdict
This tool is a good choice for advertisers looking to optimize creatives for attention and brand impact while boosting revenue with AI-driven insights (that you can download with one click!).
3. AdScan
AdScan has an AI analysis tool that looks at your creatives and provides pros and cons for you to use as feedback to improve your ads further. You can also discover high-performing ad ideas and inspo, analyze top competitor creatives, and launch data-backed ads that drive results.
Ideal users
AdScan is a top choice if you’re a solo marketer, a small agency, or a small business who also wants to do competitor research.
Pricing
AdScan has a 5-day free trial, then plans start at $39.99 per month, with access to the AI analysis tool.
Final Verdict
If you want something that provides you more than just feedback on your creatives, AdScan is worth the look. It’s worth noting, however, that the feedback you get from the AI analysis tool isn’t the most in-depth so you may need to do some interpretation.
9 tips to track, test, and improve your ads
Do you need a little help understanding why an ad works (or doesn’t)? Here are 9 practical ways to refine your ads and get better results:
Tracking your ads effectively
Before making any changes, you need a clear view of how your ads are performing. That means tracking the right data and using the right tools to help you succeed. Here are a few things you can do:
- Use AI-powered creative analytics tools: AI takes the guesswork out of creative performance by analyzing what works and what doesn’t. It can predict which ad variations will perform best based on past data or even break down video ads frame by frame to see exactly which visuals and messaging grab attention.
- Set clear KPIs (key performance indicators): While clicks are important, focus on conversions, ROAS, and engagement time. Just because an ad gets a high number of clicks doesn’t always mean that it’s a success — check the other metrics to make sure those clicks are leading to dollars in your pocket.
- Segment performance by platform and audience: A Facebook ad that performs well with 25 to 34-year-olds might not work for a TikTok audience. It’s a good idea to break down data by channel and demographic so you can really see what’s actually working.
- Monitor ad fatigue and engagement drop-offs: If your CTR is dropping, but the impressions are still pretty high, your audience might be tired of seeing the same ad over and over again. You can refresh creatives by creating and publishing variations, so ad viewers don’t get put off.
Testing and experimenting with creatives
AI can make ad testing faster and more effective by automating analysis and predicting what will perform best. Here’s how you can use AI to improve ad testing:
- Do some A/B testing: Analytics tools can automate A/B testing by rotating different versions of an ad and identifying which elements drive the most conversions. With AI tools like Bestever, you can get more valuable insights from your testing, including suggestions for improving your creatives further.
- Use dynamic creative optimization (DCO) for personalized ads: Platforms like Meta and Google Ads can automatically combine different headlines, images, and descriptions to create personalized ad variations tailored to each user who sees your ads. This allows you to serve highly relevant ads without manually creating dozens of versions.
- Use AI to predict and optimize creative performance: AI tools like Bestever analyze past ad performance to give you actionable recommendations before you launch a new campaign. For example, if past data shows that short-form videos with bold text overlays drive the most engagement, these tools may suggest similar formats for future ads.
Improving ad creatives for better results
- Analyze ad messaging and emotional triggers: Use a tool like Bestever to look at your highest-converting ads and your competitors. Do they use urgency (“Limited Time Offer”) or social proof (“Join 10,000+ happy customers”)? Take note and adjust your ads accordingly.
- Refine visual elements: You can make small design tweaks, like using a bold CTA button or higher contrast colors, which may significantly improve engagement. Creative analysis tools can help you figure out which elements to improve.
Optimize your ads with Bestever’s Ad Analysis Dashboard
Creative analytics might feel overwhelming or even hard to understand. Thankfully, tools like Bestever can help you get a deeper understanding of why your creatives are working (or not).
Bestever’s console helps you look at your creatives to see which ones are driving action. You can also use the ad analysis dashboard to see which specific elements are good, and which ones need to be improved.
Here’s how we can help improve your ads:
- Analyze your creatives: Our Ad Analysis Dashboard lets you upload your image or video creative to get actionable feedback. It uses computer vision combined with past performance data to give you concrete insights into your creative’s CTA strength, visual appeal, info density, and audience relevance.
- Get competitor insights: Bestever’s console lets you search up to 4 competitors whose ads you want to track and benchmark. You can get a summary of their ad strategies, their top creatives driving action, and more helpful info to help you create comparable ads.
- Generate ads: You can generate image, video, and audio ads on Bestever’s Creative Studio. You can use the ads as they are or get your designers to optimize them for you further. We also have an in-house design team if you need more help.
- Narrow your targeting: During onboarding, you can enter your website’s URL to generate audience personas that can help you narrow your targeting more precisely.
Ready to create top-performing ads? Let our team show you how Bestever’s Ad Analysis Dashboard can analyze your creatives and improve them based on data-driven insights.