Advertising has gone through many revolutions in the past few decades. Mass consumer print media. Radio. TV. All massively captured attention in new ways and the changed the field of advertising. Each of these revolutions were different, but in many ways similar.

But the internet is a revolution on an unprecedented scale and we’ve barely even scratched the surface. With the internet advertisers like me have access to data. Real data. Which means answers to questions that before we could only dream about, like:

• How many people saw my ad today?
• What did it cost me per action?
• What percentage of buyers were male, 39 years old, used an old iPhone and like baseball?

You would be forgiven for assuming the internet has brought on the age of data in the advertising world. It’s a common opinion, after all. However, then tell me this: when something is abundant, easily accessible and understood by many – does that make it more valuable or less? Is having access to data a competitive advantage? Not really.

Data doesn’t win advertising wars – creative does, and more so than ever before. Understanding data is a prerequisite for playing the advertising game in the internet era. If you don’t know your CPA from your CTR – you already lost.

Creative is the real king of the internet. Creative has always been important, but now it’s truly crucial.

Your annoying video gets skipped on Youtube. People switch tabs or put down their phone if ads are unskippable. Your CPM on Facebook gets more expensive if people don’t interact with it and you get low quality scores. On the winning side you have A/B testing, free organic reach and unlimited scalability with positive ROI. But it all depends on bringing value to the right people.

People who don’t like ads and are even a little bit technically savvy have adblock. Banner ads are dying like the pop-ups before them because they’re annoying. You can buy attention and a “swing at bat”, but you can’t force people to view your blinking BUY NOW button any more than a TV ad could force people to stay seated instead of going to the bathroom.

This is coming from someone who has ran his fair share of ads that annoy people, and simply don’t bring customers any value.

The best wins come from great creative ideas that spread like wildfire – just like it always worked in newspapers and TV ads before. It’s just that with the internet those wildfires spread globally rather than locally. And each swing at bat is CHEAP.

You know what else is cheap?

Bad creative. Slap shoe on nice background, put it an instagram ad targeting everyone who talks about shoes and call it a day. See what results that gets you.

You can A/B test bad creative all day – hundred different shoes, angles, adtexts and headlines. The upside is going to be minimal compared to a well crafted, truly value-adding creative campaign to an audience of captive fans.

See Dollar shave club, Gym Shark, Koala mattresses for companies that do it right. Now go spend more on creative and less on analytics.