A Quick Guide to Better Understanding Ad Design Automation

876 billion dollars.

That’s how much money will have been spent on digital ads worldwide by 2026, according to experts’ predictions.

Take a minute to take it in. That’s a lot of money and a lot of ads, to say the least.

While most of us have a hard time wrapping our heads around this figure, it’s not so surprising that an industry so competitive and ever-evolving as the advertising industry is projected to increase its global digital ad spending by $120 billion dollars from 2024 to 2026.

That’s all very impressive, Robi, you might say. But how can I cut through all of this (ad) noise and make a difference with my own ad campaigns? How can I speed up my ad design and delivery?

Say no more, this is where ad design automation comes in.

What is ad design automation?

Advertising design automation is the process of scaling your ad design production by using technology. This type of creative automation allows you to deliver a large volume of ads in a short amount of time while staying on brand and not cutting back on the quality and integrity of your visual assets.

Why use ad design automation

These are some of the main reasons you should use automation for your ad design:

• Gain more productivity and creative freedom

When time is short and demand is high, automation can prove to be a real campaign saver, ensuring faster production with the same resources. What’s more, by reducing the time spent on repetitive tasks and manual design iterations, you actually gain more productive and creative time for you and your team, when you can focus on brainstorming ideas for new campaigns and personalizing your ads to reach the right audience.

• Maintain brand consistency

When you create a lot of visual content, staying on the brand can be tricky without a well-defined process in place and even then, misalignments can occur. Automation takes that pressure off your team and allows you to achieve brand consistency continuously while reducing errors, which is key to building brand trust. Setting up your brand kit once in your ad design platform will ensure that all future iterations of your ads will reflect your brand identity to a T, across all variations in size, format, text, and language.

• Scale your work

Whether you lead a big team or you are the one wearing all the hats in your business, there are times that are busier than others when you’d do anything for an extra hand to help you finish your campaigns on time without working extra hours. Automation can give you that helping hand and take over the repetitive tasks from your team, so you can successfully scale your work and maintain your budget, without hiring a person that you may not need in the long run.

• Collaborate better with your team

Real-time collaboration comes with many challenges when working remotely. Juggling with and switching between many tools and work environments slows down the production process and creates unneeded friction between team members, especially at the approval and feedback stage. Automation sweeps in and lures you: What if you could use the same platform to create and automate your ads, as well as send visuals for approval and leave feedback and comments for your team? Game-changer.

What to consider before automating your ad design process

And last but not least, here are some important things to keep in mind before you start automating your ad design:

• Choose the right automation tool

As with anything else, there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to choosing the right ad design platform for your needs. What works for your competitors might not work for you. And using the wrong tool might actually harm your business in the long run, so it’s essential to first assess your professional goals, needs, and future plans and then choose accordingly. Some tools might be too complex, with a steep learning curve that hinders rather than speeds up your production process, while others might not have all the features you need to fully automate your ad design.

Recommendations and reviews are a good place to start while trying them out as a part of a limited trial are the best. Most ad design platforms such as Creatopy, Celtra, or Flexitive offer creative automation features, and the easiest way to find out which one suits you best is to put them to the test first and then make an informed decision.

• Not everything can be automated

 Am I really saying this in an article praising automation? Yes, yes I am. While there are a lot of things automation can do for you, there are also things it can’t do. The human mind, with its infinite and seemingly random possibilities that lead to great ideas, and people coming together and coming up with innovative solutions, both fall under the umbrella of creativity. It is a trait that defines humans and cannot be automated, even though we call it creative automation. So let automation make more space for creative time, but don’t expect it to replace it completely. 

• Make sure you’re ready to start automating your ad design

To fully reap the benefits of automation and see the results sooner rather than later, you must be prepared before embarking on this process. This ties in with my earlier point, automation can help you stay on brand, but it can’t do your branding for you. It can help you achieve your goals faster, but it can’t establish these goals for you. Automating your ad design without the people, processes, and materials that you need can end up looking a lot like starting an ad design without a proper brief: aimless, confusing, and frustrating.

Wrapping up

Automation does not aim to replace human input or creativity but to enhance them by removing repetitive tasks from your processes and freeing up your time for ideation and design.

By increasing work quality and efficiency, automating your ad design helps you reach your business goals faster and stay on top of your advertising game in today’s competitive world. And why work harder, when you can work smarter?