Let’s get one thing out of the way: media buying is no longer the sexy part of digital advertising. Harsh, I know. But in 2025, with Meta, Google, YouTube, and Reddit leaning so heavily on AI-driven automation, the knobs and dials of media buying have been replaced with… well, big shiny buttons labeled “Advantage+,” “Performance Max,” and “Let us handle it.”

So if the platforms are running the show on targeting, bidding, and placements, what’s left for brands to differentiate on? The answer: your creative strategy.

Creative is now the real growth lever. It’s the reason some D2C brands scale like wildfire while others burn cash faster than you can say “optimize for conversions.” And the brands that get this right? They don’t just survive the automation wave…they ride it.

Automation Made Media Buying a Commodity

Remember when media buying was an art form? When you had to actually know your audience, handpick placements, and bid like you were in a high-stakes eBay auction? Yeah, those days are gone.

In our Meta AI Ad Tools blog, we talked about how platforms have essentially eaten the role of targeting and optimization. Meta’s AI knows more about your ideal buyer than you ever could. Google’s AI search updates are rewriting the way branded search campaigns show up. Even Reddit is leaning into automation, with machine learning determining which communities your ads should appear in.

So if the machine is already running your budget smarter and faster than you, then fighting over bidding strategies is like trying to beat Waze at directions. Spoiler: you won’t.

Which means your competitive edge can’t come from the buy, it has to come from the creative.

Creative Is the D2C Brand Superpower

Here’s where it gets good: creative is the one thing automation can’t replace. Platforms can decide who sees your ad and when they see it, but only you can decide what they see. And in a world of algorithmic sameness, the “what” is everything.

If you’re a small D2C brand, creative is your weapon. You may not have a million-dollar ad budget, but you can make something funny, weird, relatable, or emotionally punchy that stops a scroll cold.

Think about the brands you personally love. Nine times out of ten, it’s not because they had the most efficient cost per click. It’s because their creative made you feel something, or at least made you laugh hard enough to click “Add to Cart.”

This lines up with what Think with Google has been saying for years: creative is the single biggest driver of ad performance. And as Figure 8 Thinking points out, creativity isn’t just a “nice to have.” It directly drives revenue growth.

So yes, creative strategy isn’t fluff. It’s literally the growth lever you’ve been ignoring while arguing over which audience size gives you a better CTR.

Creative Testing: The Only Game in Town

The other mistake D2C brands make? Thinking one killer ad is enough. It’s not. Creative testing isn’t just about finding your next best performer, it’s about constantly iterating because what works this month might flop the next.

This is where frameworks like our 90-Day Full Funnel Framework come into play. It’s not about randomly throwing new ads at the wall every week. It’s about systematically testing angles, hooks, and visuals across the funnel, so that top-of-funnel ads grab attention, mid-funnel builds trust, and bottom-funnel seals the deal.

Pair that with Meta’s new AI-driven automation, and you’ve got the perfect recipe: let the robots figure out who to serve the ads to, while you focus on creating ads worth serving.

Why Creative Beats a Bigger Budget

Here’s the thing no media buyer wants to admit: you can’t outspend bad creative. You can pump $50K into a campaign, but if the ad looks like it was shot on a 2009 BlackBerry, the algorithm won’t save you.

Meanwhile, a smaller D2C brand with scrappy, authentic creative can completely outperform you, even with half the spend. That’s why creative is the great equalizer. A scroll-stopping ad can punch above its weight in ways no bid strategy ever could.

It’s why so many of the fastest-growing D2C brands feel like they came out of nowhere. They didn’t. They just made content that felt human, got amplified by automation, and reached way beyond their budget.

The “Creative Chaos” Problem

Now, here’s the fun part: creative is messy. It doesn’t live in a spreadsheet. It doesn’t always obey logic. You might have a perfectly polished ad flop, and a scrappy lo-fi TikTok blow up overnight.

That’s the scary thing for a lot of brands, creative feels like chaos. But here’s the truth: controlled chaos is your friend. If you build a system where you’re testing, tracking, and learning from creative experiments, you’ll be miles ahead of brands that stick to one “safe” ad and ride it into the ground.

Remember our Meta Attribution blog? Attribution is changing constantly, which means your reporting is never going to be 100% perfect. Instead of chasing perfection in attribution, focus on testing creative that consistently makes your metrics trend in the right direction.

TL;DR

Media buying is automated. Everyone’s running Advantage+, Performance Max, and AI-driven placements. Which means the one thing you can control—your creative—is the real growth lever for D2C brands in 2025.

Creative is what makes people stop scrolling, laugh, relate, or buy. It’s the only part of your campaign that the robots can’t replicate. Use frameworks like our 90-Day Full Funnel system to test creative systematically, lean on automation to handle the grunt work, and stop obsessing over bids and budgets.

The brands that win in 2025 won’t be the ones with the fanciest dashboards. They’ll be the ones with ads that feel human, make people feel seen, and turn impressions into customers.

So stop treating creative like the side dish. It’s the main course—and the secret to scaling your brand.

The Bottom Line: Creative First, Media Second

You can have the most sophisticated targeting in the world, a media plan that looks like it was built by NASA, and Meta’s AI tools running on turbo mode—but if your creative flops, none of it matters. Creative strategy is the real growth lever in D2C, and it’s the one thing your competitors can’t just copy-paste from a playbook.

The brands that win aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones with creative that actually makes people stop mid-scroll, laugh, nod, or even mutter, “Okay fine, I’ll buy it.”

That’s where we come in. At Good On, we build Ad Creatives That Convert Fast—design-led, message-sharp, and performance-built. From scroll-stopping visuals to copy that cuts through the noise, we deliver ads that connect instantly and convert consistently.

Your audience is already scrolling. Let’s make sure they pause—and click.

👉 Explore our Ad Creatives

Because media buys set the stage, but creative steals the show.