As consumer journeys converge, why is brand advertising still stuck in silos?

In an era of converged media, consumers seamlessly navigate between social feeds and streaming television, often using multiple screens at once. By 2025, nearly four out of five adults will engage with devices simultaneously, creating a fluid, always-on journey. Yet for many brands, the advertising strategy required to meet them there remains stuck in the past, fragmented across siloed channels.

This disconnect creates a significant gap between consumer behavior and brand communication. The core challenge is no longer about reaching audiences on different platforms, but about telling a consistent and compelling story across all of them. In the age of AI, the opportunity to bridge this gap has never been greater, but it requires a fundamental shift away from simply replicating assets and toward a more intelligent, adaptive approach.

We spoke with Kristin MacGregor, Global Chief Commercial Officer at Smartly and 17 year Google veteran. Drawing on a long and distinguished career that includes serving as a Managing Director at Google, MacGregor has been on the front lines of digital advertising's biggest transformations. She argued that as consumer behavior converges, brands must move beyond outdated workflows and embrace a new model of creative strategy powered by AI.

• Smart adaptation over replication: "Smart adaptation really beats identical replication and quality should never be sacrificed for efficiency," MacGregor said. "We all know that creative is the full-funnel performance driver, and it's the big competitive differentiator marketers have today."

While the vast majority of marketers run campaigns across both CTV and social media, a startlingly small fraction are truly optimizing their creative. MacGregor pointed to a crucial data point that highlights this performance gap.

• The 16% problem: "Only 16% are using the identical assets across these channels," she explained. This statistic reveals a massive missed opportunity. While brands are present on the right platforms, most are failing to tailor their message to fit the unique context of each, leaving performance and brand cohesion on the table.
• Create once, scale infinitely: The solution, according to MacGregor, lies in a philosophy of "intelligent, infinite creative." It begins with a core human idea and uses technology not to replace creativity, but to scale it with the necessary guardrails. "The key is really creating once and scaling infinitely. And with an ad tech partner that has the proper brand governance, the proper intention and context, that is possible," she said.

For years, the primary barrier to this level of customization has been simple economics. Producing unique, high-quality assets for every platform was prohibitively expensive and time-consuming, especially for video.

• The cost barrier: "Cost tends to be the one piece of feedback we hear. Producing multiple pieces of creative variation tailored to a platform is the top reason brands don't lean into creating specific, scalable creative," MacGregor noted. "With video being really important today, that's the daunting piece: how to change voiceovers, the format, and the length."

This new strategic capability is not just theoretical; it delivers quantifiable business results. MacGregor emphasized that a sophisticated creative strategy has a direct impact on core business metrics like conversion rates and return on ad spend.

• Driving real results: "We work a lot with customers on increasing conversion rates and return on ad spend, to ensure we drive better results against their campaigns and investments," she said. "And creative plays a massive role in the business results that are driven." This is proven in practice. In a partnership with The Times, Smartly used creative automation to help the publisher achieve a 2x improvement in cost-efficiency for its campaigns, demonstrating the powerful link between intelligent creative and bottom-line performance.

Looking ahead, MacGregor explained that the industry is only at the beginning of a major technological and strategic shift. Grounded in her experience witnessing multiple waves of tech disruption, she sees the current moment as a pivotal opportunity for brands to evolve.

• The world of AI: "I think we are just scratching the surface of what is possible in the world of AI. I've been in this industry for a long time, and we've seen different moments with technology change and how the consumer change comes along with that. What I'm really excited about is to see how the age of AI is going to change how brands show up to consumers across their behavioral shifts. How can advertisers use AI to power better results and create better ads to really show up in these moments and drive the best business outcomes against their investments?"