Social Media Ads Rule: When Creative Is the Bottleneck, Buy UGC Before Buying More Media
Should I invest in more ad spend or in creative production capacity first? Prioritize owning a creative supply pipeline, such as UGC production, before scaling media spend.
By InnovaAI ResearchPublished Updated
“Should I invest in more ad spend or in creative production capacity first?”
Prioritize owning a creative supply pipeline, such as UGC production, before scaling media spend.
Agencies pour more budget into media buying when performance plateaus, ignoring that the real constraint is creative volume and variety. They end up paying higher CPMs for the same ads, while competitors with UGC pipelines win the auction at lower costs.
The category is commoditizing on execution, so agencies that only buy media face margin compression. Owning creative supply, like Billo's network of over 5,000 creators and performance data from 326,000 ads, differentiates the agency and improves ad performance. Recent research shows AI-driven traffic and agentic workflows are shifting client expectations, but creative remains the lever that directly impacts ad results.
- •Client retainer is flat or declining despite rising ad budgets
- •Creative testing velocity is slower than the platform's learning phase
- •Agency margins are compressing on media buying fees alone
- •Client asks for more volume but rejects most ad variations
- •Competitors are winning auctions with user-generated content