Comprising 85% of global digital ad spending, Google and Facebook are titans in the world of digital marketing.

But while these tech giants currently drive the lion’s share of revenue growth, it’s important to note the limitations in their ad units and the potential offered by a return to more creative advertising solutions. More than 20 years later, Bill Gates’ famous statement is as true as ever: Content is King.

High Volume, Low Impact

Facebook and Google offer advertisers a wealth of opportunities to put their collateral in front of potential customers. However, the sheer volume offered by these companies is constrained by the number of ad units provided on each site. For even the strongest marketing team, the limitations of Facebook and Google present a frustrating challenge. Users want to be entertained, engaged and persuaded by advertisements. But while users seek authenticity and creativity, Facebook and Google offer repetition and often flat messaging. The ad units offered by Facebook and Google are a natural inhibitor to storytelling—making it nearly impossible for brands to develop connections and relationships with consumers.

Turning a Barrier into a Gateway

While the current online advertising ecosystem may seem like a barrier to creativity, certain digital avenues can instead serve as a gateway to engaging brand storytelling. In contrast to the limited options offered by Facebook and Google, programmatic creative offers brands a multitude of opportunities for sequencing messages and delivering targeted content to the correct end user. Instead of being forced to repeat content, programmatic creative allows brands to update their collateral in real time and ensure that their messaging is consistently relevant and fresh.

Maximizing Returns from Creativity: How to Leverage Programmatic to Your Advantage

In the current digital marketing industry, advertisers can increase the impact of their messaging by taking taking advantage of the tools at their disposal:

1. Tailor content to specific devices: By ensuring that content is suited for the device on which it’s being viewed, you give your collateral the best possible chance to engage with and make an impact on consumers.

2. Develop multi-channel campaigns for multi-faceted engagement: As users move between devices, a creative multi-channel campaign can develop a storyline and build engagement over multiple interactions in different formats. A complementary campaign deployed across multiple devices allows you to avoid the scourge of repetition and increase your opportunities to interact with the end user.

3. Use the format to drive creativity: Rather than developing a message and then adapting it to various formats, innovative advertisers should look from the outside in to deliver compelling storytelling. During the recent World Cup, the global beer brand Anheuser-Busch InBev developed wallpaper creative content specific to home pages. The engagement and number of interactions that resulted from these creative executions far exceeded those of campaigns using a one-size-fits-all design for multiple formats.

Digital advertising undoubtedly makes it easier to be creative and offers new and unparalleled opportunities to tell stories and drive engagement. It’s time for advertisers to get creative and to take advantage of these opportunities. Those that do, and recognize that Content is Still King, will be the winners in this new digital age as well.

By Jerem Febvre, co-founder and President Americas

This article was first published in Media Post - The Marketing Insider