What Makes Advertising Strategies Effective

A strategic guide to ad effectiveness and high-impact campaigns in 2025 and beyond.

Delivering effective advertising has never been more complex and critical. Marketers today have more tools, data, and media channels than ever before. So why do modern ad campaigns still fall short? 

The reality is that creative is often optimized too late, personalization lacks nuance, and frequency goes ignored. Compounding the issue, measurement systems often struggle to keep pace with how consumers move through their journeys, shifting seamlessly across platforms and devices. 

The result isn't just inefficiency. It's the potential erosion of brand equity, wasted media spend, and missed performance outcomes. In short, the gap between intent and impact is growing. To close it, brands need more than just media coverage and catchy creative. They need strategies backed by real insight into what actually drives attention, relevance, and action.

This strategic guide previews insights from DISQO’s State of Advertising 2025 report, offering a direct line to what consumers say makes advertising resonate. It highlights where even the most advanced strategies are falling short and outlines the key principles defining high-performing modern advertising. Use it as your guide to rethink advertising effectiveness and marketing trends to build more innovative, measurable campaigns that drive real business results in 2025 and beyond.

• The creative playbook for creating the best ads

• How relevance enhances ad effectiveness

• How to manage ad frequency and exposure with intention

• Personalization in modern advertising 

• Key takeaways and the future of advertising trends

The creative playbook for creating the best ads

While strong creative remains the cornerstone of effective advertising, in today’s environment, it’s not enough to grab and convert attention alone. Creative elements must connect with meaning, deliver value, and compel action across any screen or format.

According to DISQO’s State of Advertising report, the most memorable ads are those that deliver more than just a message. They create emotional connections, offer tangible value, and use visual storytelling to leave a lasting impact.

According to consumers, here’s what makes an ad truly memorable:

• 40% say humor and emotional appeal drive ad recall
• 38% point to strong visual design
• 37% highlight special offers or discounts

For advertisers, the successful modern creative formula is clear: emotional resonance + perceived value + visual clarity 

Yet, despite creative’s impact, too many brands still rely on post-campaign analysis to evaluate ad effectiveness. With direct insight from industry professionals, we uncovered that:

• 45% of advertisers only assess performance after the campaign ends
• 20% have no consistent creative testing process at all

Without in-flight measurement and iteration, brands are left guessing. They’re reacting instead of refining. In a market where attention is earned in seconds, that approach is no longer viable.

What high-performing brands do differently

The best creative strategies aren’t just well-produced. They’re well-timed, well-placed, and continually refined in-flight. They focus less on the perfect launch and more on dynamic performance and optimization over time. 

Successful brands:

• Use real-time creative testing to measure marketing effectiveness before wasting media budget
• Adapt messaging based on platform context and audience segment
• Pair storytelling with urgency, especially in performance-oriented placements

And they never rely on a single asset to carry the full campaign. Variation is essential, not just for engagement, but for managing frequency in modern advertising and keeping creative fresh across channels.

Your calls to action 

Creative draws consumers in, but to keep them there, it has to be relevant, meaningful, and built to perform. The most effective campaigns aren’t just creatively strong. They’re creatively smart. Consumers have made it clear. The ads that work are the ones that:

• Make people feel something

• Show clear value (26% say ads with clear explanations of benefits and features are a top consideration driver)

• Leave a lasting visual impression

Creative done right doesn’t just look good. It drives real outcomes.

How relevance enhances ad effectiveness 

While great creative earns attention, relevance sustains it. Consumers aren’t just looking for well-made ads. They want messaging and value that reflects their needs, interests, and context. In a fragmented media environment, where discovery and decision-making happen across multiple platforms, relevance makes advertising feel personal and reinforces consideration. 

Data from DISQO’s State of Advertising report confirms this shift. While creative strength matters, consumers respond more when the message feels aligned with their moment:

• 24% say they find ads helpful when actively considering a purchase
• The top reason people say they’re less likely to consider a product after seeing an ad is that it didn’t feel relevant (37%)
• 22% of marketers recognize the need for more relevant, less intrusive advertising
• Yet, only 28% of advertisers customize their creative content by platform

There’s a clear gap between what consumers expect and what most brands deliver.

Why ad relevance still falls short

While many marketers say they invest in personalization, the execution tells a different story:

• 85% of advertisers report using some form of personalization
• Yet, only 23% of consumers say ads they encounter often align with their interests.
• Just 28% of advertisers customize messaging based on platform
• And, 15% of advertisers admit they aren’t investing in personalization at all

The result for consumers is an experience that feels generic at best and annoying at worst. Personalization without context is just noise. 

Why prioritize precision over volume

Relevance doesn’t mean more messages. It means smarter ones. Brands that perform best prioritize precision, not scale, for personalization. They build strategies around the moment, not the segment.

That means:

• Serving ads in the right context, where consumers are most open to associated influence
• Timing messages around behaviors, not static personas
• Adapting creative across platforms, so content feels native, not forced

When brands get this right, the payoff is significant. Relevant ads drive more than engagement. They build trust, lift brand perception, and move people through the funnel.

Understanding attention 

Generally speaking, consumers are open to advertising. Sixty-five percent say they at least sometimes pay attention to ads they see or hear. So while the opportunity is there, without intentional relevance, attention can fade.

To close this gap, brands must shift from segmentation-based personalization to signal-based execution. That means listening more closely, reacting faster, and designing for behavior, not assumptions.

Your calls to action

Ensure that you speak to the right person, in the right place, at the right time—not occasionally but consistently. Relevance isn’t an overlay. It’s a strategy that turns creative into connection and impressions into outcomes.

How to manage ad frequency and exposure with intention

While repetition can drive awareness, unmanaged frequency drives apathy. Riding a fine line, when consumers see the same ads too often, they’re tuning them out. Frequency, once viewed as a necessary tactic for reinforcement, is now one of the fastest ways to erode brand perception when not carefully managed. 

Data from DISQO’s State of Advertising report shows that overexposure is not just an annoyance. It’s a performance risk:

• 35% of consumers say they tend to ignore ads they see repeatedly
• 27% say repeated ads actively annoy them
• Just 9% say repetition makes them more likely to consider a product

At the same time, advertisers seem to underestimate the problem. Only 8% say frequency management is “extremely challenging,” while 37% rate it as a moderate challenge. This disconnect leads to one thing: wasted spend.

Why ad frequency needs a new strategy

In a fragmented media environment, where consumers move fluidly across screens and platforms, measuring exposure in silos leads to duplication. That duplication often looks like scale, but feels like saturation to the consumer. The result isn’t greater brand or ad recall. It’s ad fatigue. What advertisers need isn’t more impressions. It’s a smarter, more thoughtful delivery.

How high-performing brands manage frequency

The most effective marketers don’t leave frequency to chance. They apply cross-platform discipline, monitor delivery holistically, and refresh creative to keep messages from going stale and inducing ad fatigue. 

They focus on:

• Cross-channel monitoring to reduce overlap and avoid overexposure
• Creative variation to deliver the same message in fresh, engaging ways
• Context-aware delivery that prioritizes timing and moment, not just reach
• Avoiding platform echo chambers, especially on social and CTV, where the same users may be targeted repeatedly

Importantly, they measure the impact of frequency repetition not just on awareness, but on sentiment and intent through the funnel. 

Your calls to action

Managing frequency is not just a media tactic. It’s brand management. Overexposure doesn’t just waste budget, it damages credibility. Smart brands recognize that consistency should never feel like monotony. 

When every impression is a moment of brand experience, how often you show up matters just as much as what you say. Ensure that you:

• Control the volume 
• Monitor the impact 
• Stay relevant without becoming invisible

Personalization in modern advertising 

Personalization is no longer a differentiator. It's the baseline expectation, and most brands are still falling short. Despite widespread adoption of audience targeting and segmentation strategies, consumers are consistently underwhelmed by the relevance of the ads they see. The issue isn’t exposure. It's execution. 

DISQO’s research highlights the disconnect:

• Just 11% of consumers say they are often surprised by how well ads match their interests 
• 35% say irrelevant or poorly targeted ads make them less likely to consider a product
• And when asked what derails purchase intent, 29% point to excessive repetition

In other words, even when brands reach the right audience, their message might miss the moment.

The role of context in driving meaningful engagement

Relevance doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s shaped by where an ad appears and how that placement aligns with the viewer’s mindset. As a result, 58% of consumers say they are more likely to consider buying from a brand that appears within content they like. For Gen Z, that number climbs to 67%, with 25% strongly agreeing. When brands show up in trusted, preferred environments, they gain credibility.

This is why placement strategy matters as much as message strategy. Context isn’t just a backdrop. It’s a signal of intention, quality, and cultural awareness.

Elevating personalization from targeting to trust

The most effective advertising doesn’t just deliver the right message to the right audience. It shows up in the right place, at the right time, with intent. 

To get there, high-performing marketers are:

• Moving beyond one-size-fits-all creative and tailoring messaging by platform
• Prioritizing placements that align with content consumers already value
• Integrating personalization with context, tone, and timing to reinforce trust
• Treating media partnerships as brand equity decisions, not just reach drivers

This kind of precision isn’t about complexity. It’s about coordination, unifying creative, media, and measurement so that each element contributes to a more relevant, more resonant experience.

Your calls to action 

Personalization alone isn’t enough. Without context, it can feel flat or, worse, intrusive. To stand out in a saturated media environment, brands should combine relevance with respect. That means knowing not just who your audience is but where they are, what they care about, and how your message fits into that experience. Effective advertising today is about presence with purpose. And purpose starts with precision. 

Key takeaways and the future of advertising trends

By now, it’s clear that modern advertising is no longer about who can be the loudest. It’s about who can be the most precise, intentional, and aligned. 

The most effective strategies reflect how people engage with media trends today across creative, relevance, frequency, and context. They aren’t built on assumptions or siloed metrics. They’re built on measurable, real-time insights grounded in the modern consumer journey across every platform and screen. 

Here’s what this modern playbook makes clear:

• Creative must be dynamic. Emotional resonance, visual clarity, and real-time measurement drive effectiveness.
• Relevance is earned. Consumers reward brands that speak to their needs, not just their demos.
• Frequency demands discipline. Repetition without strategy undermines performance and trust. 
• Personalization must include context. Where an ad appears is just as important as what it says.

The gap between advertiser intent and consumer experience is real and widening. But it can be closed.

How to measure full-funnel advertising effectiveness with DISQO

DISQO’s State of Advertising 2025 report is more than a snapshot. It’s a diagnostic tool and a strategic guide for the future of advertising. Built on a foundation of person-level data, it connects what consumers see and feel with what they actually do, across every platform, channel, and touchpoint.

At the core of these insights, DISQO provides two robust solutions to help brands, agencies, and media companies refine and optimize their approach: 

• Brand Lift measures how advertising influences key attitudinal KPIs like awareness, favorability, and consideration. It provides a clear view of how your ad resonates across every channel and audience.
• Outcomes Lift goes further, tracking actual post-exposure behaviors such as search, site visitation, and e-commerce activity. This is where intent turns into measurable impact, and where real performance is revealed.

Together, these tools offer a complete picture of advertising effectiveness, from the top of the funnel to the moment of conversion. No gaps. No guesswork. Just clear, objective insight into what’s working and where to go next.

Whether you're focused on brand building, performance marketing, or both, DISQO helps you understand the full impact of your advertising strategies and make smarter decisions at every stage of the campaign.

Stay tuned for the release of the full report. Or connect with us now to learn how DISQO can help you measure what matters. Let’s DISQO.