Agentio finds creator ads need continuous testing

The report, Unlocking an Infinite Creative Engine, draws on performance data from 137 brands

Agentio has released a report analyzing $130 million in advertising spend across 65,000 Meta Partnership Ads, finding that brands can improve creator-led advertising by continuously testing, replacing and extending the life of creative rather than relying on individual viral campaigns.

The report, Unlocking an Infinite Creative Engine, draws on performance data from 137 brands and examines how marketers can identify effective creator ads, determine when performance is declining and move proven creative across platforms.

Partnership Ads outperform licensed UGC

Agentio’s analysis found that Meta Partnership Ads generated 19 percent higher click-through rates, 10 percent higher conversion rates and 5 percent lower cost per acquisition than identical creative run from a brand account.

The report attributes the difference to Meta being able to use both the creator’s follower and engagement data and the brand’s pixel data when optimising Partnership Ads.

Agentio recommends longer creative tests

The research also found that marketers can make premature decisions when testing creator ads. Below $100 in spend, 45 percent of ads that eventually became winners initially appeared to be underperforming. That figure fell to 26 percent when ads reached approximately $1,000 in spend.

Agentio recommends placing test ads in clean ad sets without incumbent creative and allowing approximately $1,000 in spend before deciding whether to keep or stop an ad.

Creator ads require continuous testing

According to the report, successful creator ads show signs of fatigue after an average of 36 days, with CPA increasing 1.8 times beyond that point. Agentio estimates that brands seeking to maintain 10 winning ads need to test about 40 new creator ads each month.

The findings position creator advertising as an ongoing testing process rather than a campaign built around a small number of long-running assets.

Proven creative can move across platforms

The report also recommends redeploying effective creative on other platforms when performance begins to decline. Agentio found that 34 percent of US YouTube Shorts users are not active on TikTok or Instagram Reels, creating an opportunity to reach audiences beyond those exposed to Meta campaigns.

Moving fatigued Meta Partnership Ads to YouTube Shorts can extend their lifespan, while Agentio reports CPMs 30 percent lower than those of comparable Meta Partnership Ads.

Agentio frames creator ads as a portfolio

Arthur Leopold, Co-founder and CEO, Agentio: "The biggest misconception in Creator advertising is that success comes from finding one winning ad. The reality is that every winning ad has a shelf life. The brands that consistently outperform are continuously testing new creative, replacing winners before performance declines, and extending the life of creative they've already paid to produce. That's what an infinite creative engine looks like."

The report argues that creator advertising should be managed more like portfolio management than traditional campaign management. This means planning for creative to decline, testing replacements continuously and moving proven assets to additional platforms.

The research follows Agentio’s YouTube Creator Marketing Playbook and Creator Advertising Measurement Guide, which also examine creator advertising as a scalable performance channel.

The full report can be accessed here

www.agentio.com

Follow Marketing Report on LinkedIn