A Brand Service Announcement from your friends at Pollinate. 

 At Pollinate, we love growing things — especially for our clients. We want to grow their brands, their bottom line, and their chance at helping their customers solve problems. 

We’re from Oregon, after all. There’s really good soil here. 

That’s why we’re here, delivering this Brand Service Announcement. There’s a very real, very obvious tactic that a ton of brands are ignoring — even though it could lead to exponentially more revenue. It’s the most underrated marketing success strategy you have at your disposal, and it’s a shift you can make right now. 

It’s high-quality creative.

Consider this. “Father of Advertising” David Ogilvy famously wrote, “You can’t bore people into buying your product.” That was in 1963. The man didn’t know TikTok from a watch on his wrist — but his point is infinitely more salient today. 

Because good, smart creative works. 

In fact, the higher the quality of creative, the more the sales lift. According to a 2023 study by Kantar and WARC, inventive and effective ads generate more than four times the profit than low-quality ads. And a Nielsen Catalina analysis of 500 CPG campaigns found that 49% of a brand’s sales lift from advertising can be attributed to the quality of the creative.

Nearly half. 

We’re living in an attention economy. Where eyeballs go, money flows. And in this economy, the story that you tell to get attention — the ad and brand creative — is your capital. 

It’s a numbers game: the average human sees thousands of ads per day, filtered through the lens of an ever-evolving, always targeting algorithm. Before you can capture minds, hearts and market share, you have got to break through the noise. And you’re not just competing with your competitors. You are up against every influencer, every friend they follow, and every celebration or indignation of the day. 

Let’s say you spend half a million dollars on media for an ad campaign. You’ve spent hours sweating over the strategy of it all — the media plan, the audience targeting and the buying. 

Ideally, you’ve also invested as much time, strategy and energy in your campaign creative. You’re launching something distinctive, that tells a clear and cohesive story about your brand’s character, evokes emotion, challenges assumptions and builds connection with the human beings on the other side of the screen. 

“You can’t bore people into buying your product.” – David Ogilvy, 1963

But if your design is dull, the copy flat, and the idea unoriginal, it’s the creative equivalent of racing a golf cart in the Indy 500. Your consumer will scroll on by, skip the ad, and mute the TV during commercial breaks. No eyeballs for you. You’re not engaging your audience, you’re not driving future demand, and you’re left circling the track, alone, with four times the profit sitting on the table and about 495 miles to go. Uh-oh. 

That’s an expensive uh-oh. How expensive? 

$189 billion. Ouch!

You read that right — roughly the GDP of Greece. Let’s break it down:

eatbigfish, a UK-based ad agency, worked with a data set of 55,000 ads from System1 to calculate the cost of dull advertising to the US ad industry as a whole. Using media spend estimates from 2022, they measured the amount the 75% dullest ads would have to commit in increased media spend to equal the commercial impact of the 25% most engaging ads. Which comes to $189 billion.

Let’s just pause and let that sink in. 

The good news? You have the power to change that. According to “Drivers of Advertising Profitability,” a 2023 paper by WARC and Paul Dyson, creativity is the biggest multiplier of ad profitability within our control, by a multiplication of 12. In comparison, it blows audience targeting and budget setting across geographies right out of the water.

Quality creative doesn’t just work — it works harder. It’s an incredibly powerful tool, but you’ve got to have the talent and expertise to wield its strength. 

At Pollinate, we believe every brand deserves creative that is just as valuable as the attention you seek. We’re over here fighting the good fight against boring creative, and we’re looking for brands to join the cause.

Ready to tackle the attention economy with stellar creative? Reach out!

AI is advancing quickly, reshaping how agencies and advertisers manage paid media campaigns. While Meta’s shift to AI-driven campaign management introduces efficiencies and scale, it also brings reduced control and transparency.

In its current state, some of Meta’s AI developments can create challenges for advertisers, particularly early-stage or mid-stage brands, or those in heavily regulated industries and restricted categories. At the same time, others are seeing positives in efficiency and scale. Pollinate is adapting our strategic approach as Meta’s AI evolves, while recognizing that its long-term value will depend on Meta improving transparency or delivering higher-level success.

Read on for an analysis of Meta’s Advantage+ AI enhancements, the impact and what you should monitor as platform features evolve.

Where Things Stand

As ad platforms continue to roll out AI-driven tools, advertisers increasingly face fundamental shifts in how creative is rendered, campaigns are structured, and ad delivery is optimized.

For walled-garden comparison, Google has been integrating AI and machine learning into bidding strategies, audience targeting, and campaign types for years — and programmatic DSPs are touting their AI tech, creating a sea of nearly indistinguishable offerings. In an effort to increase efficiencies for advertisers and compete with other automation-first platforms, Meta is now following Google’s lead with their comprehensive Advantage+ suite.

While these AI enhancements can save time and be effective, we’re also seeing creative output and targeting adjustments that create risk for brands. Right now, it’s also important to know that campaign setup increasingly encourages the use of Advantage+ features. Many AI settings are auto-selected by default, re-enabled after ad duplication, or just generally challenging to override. For example, in October 2025, we counted nearly forty Advantage+ settings that were pre-selected by default (one campaign, two ad sets and six newsfeeds) – many of which reactivated after duplication.

With Meta’s Advantage+, results may vary:

A Measured Approach

It’s critical to understand the tools embedded in Meta’s Advantage+ suite and best practices for effectiveness (while advertisers call for more transparency).

At Pollinate, we’re taking a measured approach, adopting the new structural best practices where it makes sense, while maintaining human oversight.

1. Understand Advantage+ & Structural Set-Up

Advantage+ prioritizes simplicity, with the goal of maximizing efficiency (lower CPAs, CPCs, etc). Its primary focus is campaign consolidation and broad targeting, moving advertisers away from granular test targeting and controlled placement delivery.

2. Cost-Benefit Analysis

Assess each Advantage+ suggestion for potential business impact. Review ad previews for creative quality, adherence to brand guidelines, compliance with category restrictions, and alignment with campaign goals. Note: The below selections are not a universal recommendation, just an illustration of options. Choose wisely for your brand’s needs!

3. Ongoing Testing, Monitoring & Adjustments

As Meta’s AI evolves, it’s important to remain adaptable while maintaining
human oversight:

• Measure campaign success both holistically and granularly in platform to understand business impact.
• Test Advantage+ features, where it makes sense for your business, and evaluate results for future optimizations.
• Implement thorough QA practices prior to launch, and throughout the flight.

Tips for human oversight:

1. Leverage bulk editing the ad level to save time when dealing with a high volume of assets. Reminder: All of the ads selected in bulk editing must be the same ad format/placement type.
2. Revisit after campaign set-up is complete for thorough QA prior to launching.
3. Activate 1st or 3rd party audiences as layered safeguards to support targeting accuracy.

Looking Ahead

Meta has stated that their vision is to fully automate advertising with AI by 2026. Recognizing that path may not be linear, the Pollinate media team wants to see one of the following outcomes to ensure the benefits of Meta’s AI outweigh the risks:

Path A: Algorithm Transparency & Results

Explainability & Detailed Reporting: A clearer understanding of why AI driven optimizations are made, allowing for more actionable insights.

Measurable Results: Demonstrated improvements in cost-efficiency and ad effectiveness that are attributable to AI optimizations.

Creative Integrity: AI-enhanced ads that support the original creative intent and remain authentic to consumers (with QA safeguards to ensure alignment).

Path B: Manual & Accessible Controls

Less Likely Long Term: Controls maintained across the platform, placement, audience targeting and creative levels of campaign set-up to manually prevent misaligned or off-brand campaign delivery.

Need Pollinate’s expertise on the quickly evolving media AI landscape? Reach out.

Ensuring all consumers can access and easily use your website is critical. After all, it’s literally your digital property; you want to empower folks to feel welcome in your space, and comfortable using your site. As an organization working within today’s society, ADA accessibility is the nice, decent thing to do, but in America, it’s also the law: the Americans With Disabilities Act, or ADA, sets the accessibility standards for public and private sector physical locations but also for websites. Keeping your site compliant with ADA standards will increase brand loyalty, build brand integrity and improve SEO. Depending on yearly profits, some businesses might even be eligible for a $5,000 tax credit. A bonus? Your legal team can sidestep any surprise lawsuits over unmet ADA requirements on your site, which is seemingly occurring more often.

What does ADA compliance mean?

Websites are specifically under ADA Title II, which uses the WCAG 2.1 to set baseline requirements for accessibility.

Pollinate recommends AA or above, which means meeting the following standards:

Contrast
Text and background colors contrast enough to be easy to read.

Site Navigation
Users can navigate your site with keyboard strokes only.

Screen Reading Software
Additional information at the code level enables the visually impaired to use screen reading software on your website.

Text Sizes
This will also allow for text to be resized.

Closed Captioning
With social media, this is becoming more commonplace, but to reiterate: all videos on your site should be understandable for hearing-impaired folks.

Consider it Routine Maintenance

To ensure continued compliance, we recommend performing a quarterly accessibility audit on your site. Think of it like an oil change or a tire rotation for a car; your website needs a routine checkup to make sure everything’s running smoothly. Over time, small things get missed during content and code updates, creating new accessibility issues— especially with multiple people working on a site.

Our Recommendation

Making your organization’s digital space a safe, respectful and inclusive environment only helps you better serve a more diverse customer segment—and will open the door to more revenue. In fact, a 2018 report showed that the total after-tax disposable income for working-age people with disabilities is about $490 billion. In other words? It’s a crucial part of your path to brand fanaticism.

At Pollinate, we partner with AccessiBe, a leader in ADA compliance, to help our clients make sure their sites are ADA-accessible. Want to see the AccessiBe widget at work? It’s the little blue guy in the bottom right corner of our website. Ready to make sure your site is up to ADA standards? Give us a call—we can work to provide you a low-cost option to get your website accessible, and allow individual users to customize their own experience.

How It Works

• AccessiBe is a licensed widget with a yearly pass-through cost, starting at $490 a year.
• The Pollinate dev team can implement the widget in about 8 hours.
• We recommend a quarterly website audit, which takes anywhere from 2-15 hours depending on site size.
• The audit is followed up by a detailed report, along with a list of tasks (and how long they’ll take) to keep the site ADA compliant.
• You decide what you want to address, and the hours you can dedicate each quarter
• Note: In our experience, the more frequently you audit, the less you’ll likely need to invest to remain compliant.

Want more thoughts on ADA compliance? Reach out.

It might seem simple, but it bears repeating: in order for your advertising campaign to be successful, it needs to be contextually brand-safe and seen by real people. Your messaging may be on-point, and your creative clever, but equally important for brand recognition, recall and engagement is a powerful, fine-tuned media buy reaching the right people.

Digital advertising carries risks that can affect consumer trust and impact media performance, especially for the financial category. When ads appear alongside misleading or unsafe content, credibility is at risk and efficiency drops. Investing in ad verification helps your campaigns run in trusted environments, protecting both brand reputation and media effectiveness.

How does it work?

Pollinate uses Integral Ad Science (IAS), a tool to measure brand safety risk, identify invalid traffic, and ensure viewability.

Industry Benchmarks

The Benefits of Ad Verification

Improved ROI: Identifying fraud and avoiding risky content can help maximize return on investment.

Consumer Trust: Brand favorability and consumer engagement improve when brands align with safe content, reducing the likelihood of a public relations crisis.

Adaptability: Verification levers can be adapted to brand values, markets and regulatory environments.

Optimized Budget: Combating fraud and invalid traffic supports media spend efficiencies.

Why is it important?

In order for your campaign to be successful, it needs to be seen, and in the correct context. Without brand safety measures, your campaign can fall flat, or even offend — and that translates into lost revenue, or even damage to the brand you’ve spent years building.

*Source: IAB & Ernst & Young **Source: IAS

Assessing Brand Safety Risk Levels

Ad verification tools like Integral Ad Science use technology to dynamically scores individual webpages to determine which content risk category they fall into, and to assess the level of risk they pose against identified settings.

Low risk page content is acceptable for all ages and audiences

Moderate risk page content is typically acceptable for most brands, somewhere in between low and high risk

High risk page content is explicitly offensive and likely doesn’t align with most brands

Risky content may include:

Critical Checklist

Brand Safety: Using page-level analysis, control the context in which ads appear (based on client relevance).

Invalid Traffic: Identify when, where and how fraudulent and non-fraudulent traffic impacts paid ads.

Viewability: Access viewability metrics and optimize toward the top-performing formats.

Monitoring vs. Blocking

Integral Ad Science (IAS) reports ‘failed’ ads depending on identified campaign settings and various factors: brand safety risk thresholds, URL exclusion lists, keywords, geo parameters, language and invalid traffic.

– If campaigns are set to monitoring, failed ads will still serve.
– If campaigns are set to blocking, failed ads will not serve.

Example Strategies

Looking for a solid agency partner who takes digital ad verification seriously — and can help you build brand fanatics? Reach out.

At Pollinate, we help retailers not just survive, but thrive during periods of economic uncertainty. Founded in 2008 during The Great Recession, we have a proven track record of helping brands build lasting customer loyalty while increasing sales, especially when competition is tough.

The brands best positioned to weather market conditions—of any kind—are the ones who ask themselves, “What’s next? How can we differentiate ourselves?” That’s why Pollinate’s core tenets are curiosity and adaptability—because defining your brand in a shifting economic climate requires constant evaluation.

Time to Soar

Using a SOAR (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Results) analysis to define your position allows us to focus on new avenues of thought that could help your business adapt to the upcoming economic uncertainties.

Unlike a SWOT analysis which uses Opportunities and Threats, a SOAR analysis uses Aspirations and Results. This positive sentiment shifts the discussion to what’s going well, areas for growth, building out long-term goals, and setting KPIs that will track your progress toward those goals.

Maintaining a long-term mindset as you define your brand builds resilience against what the market may throw at you. Like, for example, a pandemic. Has your business evolved since 2020? Of course it has—because a brand shouldn’t stay idle. The truth is, the retail landscape is ever-shifting; a “set it and forget it” attitude won’t allow for flexibility in the face of varying marketing conditions.

Using a SOAR (Strengths, Opportunities, Aspirations, Results) analysis to define your position allows us to focus on new avenues of thought that could help your business adapt to the upcoming economic uncertainties.

Unlike a SWOT analysis which uses Opportunities and Threats, a SOAR analysis uses Aspirations and Results. This positive sentiment shifts the discussion to what’s going well, areas for growth, building out long-term goals, and setting KPIs that will track your progress toward those goals.

The best brands ask themselves, “What’s next? How can we differentiate ourselves?”

Pollinate specializes in collaborating with brands to navigate the changing retail landscape. A well defined brand builds consumer confidence, which assists with customer acquisition and retention.