Maximize Your Ad Performance: 7 Questions to Ask Your Creative Automation Platform

The creative landscape has changed — and so have marketers' expectations. Today’s brands need creative automation platforms that go beyond simply producing assets. They need solutions that can scale creative production intelligently, maintain brand consistency, enable dynamic personalization across channels, and deliver real performance insights.

If you're evaluating creative automation partners, it's critical to ask the right questions. The ideal platform should empower your teams to move faster, personalize at scale, break down silos between creative and media, and continuously optimize creative for better results — without adding unnecessary complexity.

Here are seven essential questions to help you choose the right creative automation partner for your brand.

1. How does your platform scale creative production without sacrificing quality?

High-performing advertising today demands a high volume of creative; localized, personalized, adapted to multiple platforms and formats. Yet many creative teams still struggle with time-consuming manual workflows that slow down production and introduce inconsistencies.

What to look for:

• Can the platform support scalable production across social, CTV, programmatic, and emerging channels?
• Does it offer templates, automation, Gen AI and dynamic rendering to personalize creative at scale?
• How does it ensure brand standards are protected, even across thousands of variants?

Smartly's Advantage:
Smartly empowers brands to produce thousands of creative variants quickly, without sacrificing creativity, quality, or control. With deep integrations into Adobe, Figma, and After Effects, Smartly makes it easy to import layered designs, apply brand governance controls like locked templates and approved fonts, and dynamically render creatives across platforms and audiences. Built-in creative review and approval flows help teams collaborate efficiently while maintaining consistency from concept to live launch.

2. How does your platform support Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) to drive personalization at scale?

Delivering personalized experiences at scale isn’t a nice-to-have anymore — it’s essential to standing out. Your platform should enable you to automate creative testing, optimize based on real-time performance, and deliver audience-specific variations — all while minimizing manual work.

What to look for:

• Can the platform automatically generate and optimize multiple creative variations?
• How easily can it connect data feeds (such as product catalogs or audience segments) to dynamic creative rendering?
• Does it provide insights into which creative elements drive better engagement?

Smartly's Advantage:
Smartly’s Intelligent Creative capabilities turn static assets into dynamic, personalized ad experiences — tailored to each audience, platform, and format. Whether you're creating dynamic social ads, personalized CTV spots, or omnichannel programmatic campaigns, Smartly automates the process. The result: faster personalization, smarter scaling, and higher-performing creative across every customer touchpoint.

3. How does your platform enable cross-channel creative management and activation?

Consumers today move fluidly across platforms — scrolling TikTok, watching CTV, browsing retail media, and exploring Instagram — often in the same journey. Your creative automation platform should make it easy to adapt, manage, and launch creative across channels without duplicating work.

What to look for:

• Does the platform offer a centralized workspace for omnichannel creative management?
• Can creative be adapted quickly for different aspect ratios, placements, and audiences?
• How tightly does creative production connect to activation and trafficking workflows?

Smartly's Advantage:
Smartly’s Producer  Asset Library tools and project organization bring creative and media teams into a single collaborative hub. Teams can build creative variants, adapt assets for different formats and platforms, schedule launches, and traffic creatives directly into ad campaigns — all from one place. No switching systems, no re-uploading assets. Smartly unifies production, personalization, and activation to eliminate silos and speed up time-to-market.

4. How does your platform ensure brand governance at scale?

Producing creative quickly is important — but not at the expense of brand integrity. You need a platform that helps teams move fast while enforcing brand guidelines automatically.

What to look for:

• Can brand elements (fonts, colors, logos, layouts) be locked and protected?
• Are there approval gates and collaboration tools built into the workflow?
• Can teams safely create and adapt creative without risking off-brand execution?

Smartly's Advantage:
Smartly’s platform enforces brand governance by design. Whether adapting assets for global markets, CTV placements, or social ads, Smartly ensures every creative stays true to your brand, no matter who’s producing it or how fast things are moving.

5. What creative insights and optimization capabilities does your platform provide?

In today’s world, guessing isn't good enough. The best creative automation platforms help you understand which creative elements actually drive performance, before and after launch, and enable continuous improvement over time.

What to look for:

• Can it analyze post-launch creative performance at the element level (e.g., CTAs, visuals, themes)?
• Does it benchmark performance against industry standards or past campaigns?

Smartly's Advantage:
Marketers can understand what works and why, then optimize based on real-world results with insights like visual ad rankings, theme analysis, and creative benchmarking. It's not just about producing creative faster — it's about producing creative that performs smarter, too.

6. How does your platform support AI-powered creative innovation?

AI is transforming creative production — from intelligent cropping and text fitting to dynamic video assembly and background removal. The right platform should leverage AI to make creative workflows faster, smarter, and more adaptive, without sacrificing brand quality.

What to look for:

• Does the platform offer AI tools that enhance creative production speed and quality?
• How seamlessly does AI integrate into daily workflows (not just as a separate tool)?
• Does AI help both with asset creation and creative optimization?

Smartly's Advantage:
Smartly’s AI Studio features — like AI cropping, background removal, adaptive templates, and feed-based creative generation — supercharge creative workflows. Whether you need to scale video ads, personalize product creatives, or refresh UGC-style content for new audiences, Smartly’s built-in AI accelerates production and enhances creative quality, letting teams do more with less.

7. How well does your platform integrate creative and media workflows?

Siloed systems slow everything down, leading to missed opportunities, inconsistent execution, and bloated costs. Your creative automation platform should work hand-in-hand with your media buying and reporting workflows to drive better, faster outcomes.

What to look for:

• Can creatives be mapped directly to campaigns, audiences, or platforms without extra steps?
• Is creative data easily integrated into campaign reporting and optimization?
• How well do creative and media workflows align in one environment?

Smartly's Advantage:
Smartly bridges creative and media in one unified platform. From building variants to trafficking assets and analyzing results, every step happens inside Smartly. This means faster activation, cleaner reporting, and smarter cross-channel optimization — ensuring that creative and media teams move together, not in parallel.

Choosing the right creative automation platform

The right creative automation platform should help you produce, personalize, and power creative that performs, not add complexity or slow you down. By asking the right questions, you’ll gain clarity on which partner can help your brand scale creative effectively, maintain brand integrity, drive omnichannel performance, and maximize marketing ROI.

Discover how Smartly helps brands like yours unlock creative excellence at scale.