🎯 Creative is the new targeting (and most brands are behind)

Hey friend,

Over the past few months, I’ve had the same conversation with dozens of brands spending $100K+ per month on paid social and search:

“CAC is rising. Performance feels flat. We’re testing new offers, landing pages, even audience tweaks, but nothing’s unlocking meaningful growth.”

When we dig deeper, it’s almost always the same issue:

👉 Their creative system hasn’t evolved with the platforms.

Let’s dive in.

Ad platforms have changed the rules.

Meta. Google. TikTok.
Each one now uses your creative as the primary targeting signal.

• Meta ASC doesn’t care about interest stacks or lookalikes

• Google PMax is trained entirely on your assets

• TikTok Smart+ optimizes based on in-ad engagement

So when your creative lacks variety, signal clarity, or iteration cadence...

You’re not just weakening performance, you’re making it harder for the platform to find the right customer.

And that’s where most brands are structurally behind.

What we still see inside $100K-$1m/month ad accounts:

• A monthly “drop” of 3–5 hero creatives

• 3+ week production and approval cycles

• Media buyers testing assets reactively, not strategically

• Performance stalls are blamed on audience fatigue or attribution gaps

This approach made sense when targeting was manual.

But now that creative is targeting, this model causes CAC to slowly but steadily rise.

What high-performing brands are doing instead:

We’re seeing a new wave of creative-first systems emerge. Brands doing it well have:

✅ Weekly creative drops (8–12 concepts across formats)
✅ Dedicated testing budgets with graduation benchmarks
✅ Rapid iteration cycles (new concepts live within 5–7 days)
✅ Tight feedback loops between media buying, creative, and data

This isn’t just about producing more content.

It’s about building a creative ops engine that gives platforms what they need to optimize.

Real example: Apparel brand spending $250K/month

Strong product. Seasoned team. But CAC was climbing, and new creative wasn’t landing.

Here’s how we helped:

Step 1 – Install a creative testing engine

• Split out our testing and scaling campaigns

• Targeted broad audiences only (no segmentation stacking)

• Set clear benchmarks for creative graduation (thumbstop rate, CTR, MER)

Step 2 – Fix the workflow

• Enabled media buyers to use Figma and reduce handoffs

• Deployed AI-assisted copy to generate headline and hook variations

• Built a system for tracking creative inputs, performance, and winner iteration

Step 3 – Accelerate feedback loops

• Winning hooks were re-shot with new scripts and scenes

• Losing formats were cut fast

• New concepts were live weekly, not monthly

Results:

✅ 5x creative output
✅ 4x increase in win rate
✅ 22% CAC reduction at the same spend

No new offers. No new funnel. Just better infrastructure.

Why this matters more as you scale

At $100K/month+, small inefficiencies compound fast.

Every day you delay a new test or keep a stale ad live, you lose performance arbitrage to brands who’ve built for speed.

But the good news?

Mid-size brands are in the perfect position to fix this.

You have the budget, the data, and the team to do this well, without the red tape of enterprise.

Want to see how your creative system stacks up?

We’re opening up a few free Creative audits this month for brands spending $100K+/month.

We’ll map your structure, identify bottlenecks, and walk you through exactly how to improve performance using our playbook from 9-figure brands.

👉 Book your free audit here

(Zero pressure. Just clear insight and a clear action plan.)

– Toby
Co-founder, Brick.

P.S. If you're not 100% confident in your creative ops setup, this audit will show you what’s working, what’s not, and what to fix.