Glossary | C | Creatives and Ads

What are advertising creatives? 

Creatives are the assets an advertiser uses as part of an ad campaign. Ads themselves are colloquially referred to as “creatives.” 

Advertisers need to decide how to use their creative assets to communicate to their prospective customers in a cost-efficient, impactful way. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to digital advertising—one brand might find they’re best served by banner ads, while another might find they’re best served by rewarded video. 

There are 5 major mobile ad formats: 

  • Banner ads: Small rectangular ads that are nearly universally supported across all mobile apps 
  • Interstitials: Large ads that briefly take up the screen, typically interrupting a mobile session at a key moment 
  • Video ads: Large ads that play a short video, typically less than 30 seconds in length 
  • Interactive/rich media ads: Favored by gaming apps, interactive ads invite people to engage with the ad by playing a mini game, or otherwise clicking on content inside the ad 
  • Native ads: Native ads appear alongside the content in an app, and are designed to appear like native content 

Advertisers run A/B tests on their creatives to understand which ad formats, messages and calls to action generate their desired campaign outcomes at the lowest possible cost.