Is creative the new targeting? Honestly, I don’t think so…

Recently I’ve been encountering a lot of content, primarily across my professional LinkedIn network, that promotes “creative” as the new “must have” targeting for successful performance marketing campaigns. Needless to say, it piqued my interest. Like I suspect is true for many digital marketing professionals, I’m a collector of knowledge, ideas, statistics and tactics. So this kind of narrative, the promise of a new targeting idea that I could take away, nurture and use for my clients, had me engaged.

The premise is this; high quality, engaging and relevant ad creative is more critical for campaign success than traditional audience targeting alone.

It makes perfect sense. I agree…

But then I thought, is this really new?

Didn’t Meta For Business first use the term back in 2023? Haven’t designers and marketers worked together successfully for years? Haven’t we always made sure the creative we use in our campaigns is at least appropriate for, and therefore arguably targeted to our audience? And if we’re really doing our jobs well, don’t we go beyond just appropriate and make sure our creative is relevant, timely and engaging… in other words targeted?

I think for any valuable marketer that’s good at their job, and yeah bold statement, I think I’m valuable and good at my job, then we’ve been doing this for years. There’s nothing new about it.

Sure, perhaps the concise wording “creative is the new targeting”, perhaps that’s new - marketers marketing to marketers about marketing… and the attention, focus and importance of getting creative right, I’ll acquiesce and say perhaps that’s changed over the years and is in some respects “new”. Creative definitely is now more important than ever for delivering that scroll-stopping campaign…

But if right now, in the autumnal depths of 2025 is the first time you’ve carefully considered your campaign creative and what impact that can have on your performance marketing, or just your marketing, then I’d seriously have to question what on earth you’ve been doing all this time?

Creative has always been targeting; we’ve just learned how to market the concept better.