Repetitive, manual tasks are where creativity goes to die. You know it, we know it. Yet, marketers today face immense pressure to deliver high-quality, personalized ads at scale. Managing this demand, especially during peak campaign seasons, brings a bunch of daunting tasks.
Tired of this scenario, you're in pursuit of a creative automation tool that can put an end to it.
But this doesn’t mean you have to become overwhelmed with complicated specs and SWOT analysis of each one. After all, your goal is to streamline production, not to add more complexity. Or worse, get the platform you’ll spend months adopting before it helps.
Each tool for automating creative production has different strengths, and to make an informed decision in choosing one, we've compiled a list of the top 8 creative automation tools along with their reviews, pros, and cons.
Let’s dive in.
#1 Hunch: brings best-in-class AI-driven Creative Studio
Hunch is a creative automation platform that lets you produce 1000s of personalized creatives at the scale, automatically adjusted for all placements and channels.
Hunch’s Creative Studio unlocks endless possibilities, being the finest editor for both images and videos.
Hunch lets you upload your existing product feed, and use our Creative Studio with AI tools, such as background removal, or color palette suggestions to streamline the production of stunning product-centric image and video creatives. And then use the enriched catalog across any channel.
Hunch's feed management allows you to add, transform, or showcase any data from your feed, enabling each creative to tell the product story effectively.
Automation doesn’t stop at creative production with Hunch.
Once you produce thumb-stopping creatives, Hunch offers three options: using the enriched catalog on any social platform, enriching existing Advantage+ campaigns with Hunch-built creatives, and launching and managing campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat all through Hunch.
Best For: Performance marketers & Creative teams
Pricing: Hunch offers fair pricing tailored to your needs, and adjusted according to the features you use within the Hunch platform.
Main Features:
- Dynamic Image/Video Templates
- AI Background Removal
- AI Color Discovery
- AI Dynamic Layout Orientation
- Catalog Product Video (fka PLV)
- Multi Artboard Templates
- Conditional Visibility
- 3rd-party Data Integrations
- Review Tool & Creative Export
- Campaign Management on Meta & Snapchat
- Creative Optimization
- Creative Testing
Positive Review:
A user on G2 shares:
“Creating customised ads at scale and publishing them to Facebook works like a breeze. During an important season, we delivered over 700 ads to over 110 ad sets on Facebook in an instant. We were able to customise creatives and copies by including dynamic values such as local slang, area name and target audiences. I also like that we can run ads directly from a Google Sheet and Google Drive (so we don't have to go into Ads Manager to create ads which is a tedious process). Hunch's customer support is top-notch. They have given us the support needed to bring our ideas into reality."
Critical Review:
Users on G2 have noted a few cons:
"Creating new campaigns can be overwhelming if you don't create them regularly (at least I tend to forget all the nitty gritty settings that need to be set for the campaign to work out properly). However, with Hunch's awesome customer support this hasn't been an issue as they have helped us set up new campaigns everytime it has been needed."
#2 Celtra: creative production suite
Celtra is a creative automation platform with a good chunk of creative features. If you’re heavily on display, and only a small portion of your media plan is dedicated to DPA, then Celtra might be a good option for you. However, as Celtra doesn't have campaign management options built-in, you may find it hard to run your campaigns effectively.
Celtra’s studio features tools that are similar or mimic ones that most designers are already familiar with.
The builder supports multiple formats and offers responsive design thinking if you wish to resize assets. If you want to create videos but don’t have any source footage, you can use static assets in the tool to create them.
Best For: Established brands and media publishers creative agencies that want self-serve enterprise software.
Pricing: Available on request.
Main Features:
- Dynamic Image/Video Templates
- Product Level Video
- HTML5 banners
- Bulk editing
- Creative review
- Conditional templates
- Collaboration Tools
Positive Review:
A reviewer on Capterra shares:
“Overall, Celtra is easy to use and reliable. It's an all-in-one platform for digital ad campaigns; design, build, traffic, analyze and report. The Ad Creator part of the platform is designed to help you build HTML5 digital media adverts and it does this with aplomb. As well as being easy to navigate and understand, it's a very powerful platform that allows you to create rich, dynamic and exciting media without needing code. It just works.”
Critical Review:
Reviewers on Capterra have noted a few cons:
"In the last time I created creativity with transparent background, but I couldn't deliver it in apps but online on site. Celtra support said to me this problem was a publisher problem."
"There should be a sort of offline version for editing ads, even if your internet connection fails."
"As of now, it takes more time to list the campaigns in the dropdown. Showing a warning/alert when the CSV format is wrong for the locator component."
#3 Marpipe: suitable just for DPA
Marpipe is a creative automation tool that only focuses on the production of DPA templates. So if you're looking for a quick-fix solution for DPA and you aren't too demanding this is a good choice. Marpipe has built a simple creative studio and catalog management solution for dynamic product ads . However, that's where Marpipe stops, while paid social is much bigger than just DPA.
By connecting design layers to product feed columns, Marpipe allows for multiple ad variations. It emphasizes showcasing diverse data in dynamic ads, providing options to upgrade SKUs, and create both evergreen and seasonal templates.
With Marpipe, users can generate and test dynamic ad creatives with their creative automation tool. Their interface allows for mixing and matching different creative elements such as images, text, and call-to-action buttons to create thousands of ad variations. These variations are then tested in live campaigns, providing performance data to help identify the most effective combinations.
Best For: Performance marketers seeking to optimize the production of catalog ads
Pricing: Marpipe offers a tiered pricing model based on the number of creative variations and creative testing capabilities needed. This means that there could be extra charges for new creatives, which can make creative testing pretty tricky.
Custom plans are available for enterprises with higher testing demands.
Main Features:
- Enriched Catalogs
- Drag-and-drop creative editor
- Automated multivariate testing
- Customizable testing templates
- Collaborative workspace for teams
#4 Bannerflow: automate banner ads
Bannerflow is intended for designers and marketers and the platform’s focus on ad creation and versioning capabilities in its Production Studio product speaks to that. Many users prefer using Production Studio instead of Adobe.
If you’re looking for prefabricated templates that you can use, Bannerflow isn’t the right solution because it takes a different approach to building templates. Also, DCO capabilities are not built into the platform so you have to use Bannerflow with other adtech solutions.
However, Bannerflow is not just for creating ads. You can use it in owned environments such as onsite or in-app which isn’t a feature other creative automation platforms necessarily offer.
The platform designed to solve the problem of designing banners by hand is reliable, robust and very easy to use.
Currently, production capabilities include video, OTT/CTV formats but not decisioning. It only offers CTR-based optimization which is quite limited when compared to other platforms. Bannerflow can be expensive since features like feed customization and advanced retargeting incur extra fees.
Best For: Multi-national companies looking to enhance their display ads globally.
Pricing: Available on request.
Main Features:
- AB Testing
- Ad Inventory Management
- Ad Optimization
- Audience Targeting
- Banner Management
- Campaign Analytics
- Campaign Management
- Commenting/Notes
- Conversion Tracking
- Cross Channel Attribution
Positive Review:
A happy user on G2 shares:
“We usually create multiple versions of all our creatives and with Bannerflow it's super easy to manage the different versions, keeping them up to date and adjusting the messaging when necessary.
I feel that Bannerflow mainly is a big timesaver for me and my team. Creating banners and keeping them up to date is no biggie and with campaign management, we distribute our campaigns to different DSPs. So to be able to do multiple steps of the whole process of setting up a campaign within Bannerflow makes my life so much easier.”
Critical Review:
A user on Capterra noted:
“Not too intuitive. To find what to do one has to dig and actually click around. I didn't find a lot of trainning options.”
#5 Innervate: ad experience platform
Innervate (formerly RevJet) describes itself as an ad experience platform. So while it may be a great option for brands used to the SaaS pricing model, advertisers used to the CPM model may not be on board.
While other tools in the creative automation space (not necessarily on the list) suffer from a clunky UI, Innervate has focused on automatic self-optimizing performance tools and high-velocity semi-automated content production.
The platform offers solutions by industry, challenge, and channel (advertising, marketing, and customer service). Innervate helps you seamlessly navigate workflows and collaboration by automating almost all of it.
However, its video offering leaves a lot to be desired compared to leading creative automation tools.
Best For: Financial and telecom enterprises looking for a SaaS-based tool.
Main Features:
- Dynamic Audience & Creative
- Marketing intelligence
- Enterprise process management
- Automatic Experimentation
- High-velocity creative production
- Customer journey tracking
Pricing: Available on request.
Reviews: Innervate doesn’t have any reviews on reputed third-party sites. Check out their case studies on the site instead.
#6 SundaySky: video platform
SundaySky’s entire focus is to help you create personalized, interactive, video experiences. You can opt for the self-serve experience which doesn’t include media buying or use the video platform to create “video-powered experiences”.
A standout feature is its Shopify Advertising App. Once you connect your Shopify app, SundaySky automatically selects your best-performing products and creates multiple videos tailored for each individual shopper, and distributes those ads on sites like CNN and MSNBC.
The platform has a robust set of features to help you create tailored, video content for a range of use-cases. However, you may find it performing below par in other channels like display and DOOH.
The tool is intuitive and extremely easy to use when it comes to launching new campaigns. You can integrate first, second and third-party sources and data from other apps to personalize creative assets for specific audience segments or for individual viewers.
You can measure viewer engagement and impact through analytics and AI insights to optimize your messaging.
An obvious criticism of the tool is its singular focus on video. However, that may appeal to performance marketers looking to up their game with video ads.
Best For: Performance marketers who want to create tailored video ads.
Main Features:
- Dynamic templates
- Creative themes
- Color and font configurations for your brand
- Animations
- Advanced text-to-speech narration capabilities
- Music tracks
- Sound effects
- Partner integrations
- AI-powered reporting
Pricing: It is available on request.
Positive Review:
A reviewer on G2 shares:
“I love how efficient the platform allows you to be when targeting a customer base. What used to take hours or days to complete can be done in minutes using SSky. The AI voice is also very natural sounding, maybe the best I've heard. Hiring voice talent can be costly, so this is a huge plus.
The best part of using SSky is how much time it saves. Additionally, we can get information to customers in a much more digestible way. People generally prefer to watch a short video over reading an email.”
Critical Review:
A dissatisfied user on G2 noted:
“SundaySky is difficult to do business with. They are not flexible in how the contracts are structured. There are also changes made to their platform that sometimes require additional expenses that I would not expect from a SaaS solution.
Customers who have questions about their bills often times call into a call center to get their questions answered. The smart video solution deflects those calls and saves the company money by not having to have a person speak to the customer.”
#7 Adacado: DIY advertising
After nearly 10 years as an early-mover in the DCO space, Adacado changed its direction to take a DIY approach and is perfect for DIY-ers who want to launch dynamic ad campaigns or execute media buying - fast. You can be up and ready to go in about 5 minutes only using a credit card.
The platform has a 24x7 chatbot that offers help and sends usage data and feedback to the team. Tools like ad building, versioning and distribution make it a breeze to handle basic use-cases. It also has templates that are specific for verticals to get rid of guesswork. However, the platform is not a serious contender if you have more complex use-cases. Reporting is not as developed as you might want and it supports fewer channels.
In short, Adacado gives you all the support you need to launch simple campaigns but you may want to consider other platforms if your use-cases are tricky.
Best For: DIY-ers looking to execute simple use-cases.
Main Features:
- Pre-built ad templates
- Complete campaign control
- Schedule in advance
- Drag-and-drop design editor
- Daily billing & analytics
- Simplified audience targeting
- Real-time reporting
Pricing: Adacado offers a lot of features for free while the important ones require you to pay a fee.
Review: Adacado only has one old review on G2. Read their customer case studies for a complete overview.
#8 Madgicx: useful automation tool for eCommerce
Madgicx is a creative automation tool marketers could use to optimize every aspect of ad production. Designed to address the creative challenges faced by eCommerce businesses, Madgicx’s Creative Workflow is an essential tool for consistently producing creative that convert.
Each tool within Madgicx is tailored to assist with specific steps in the creative production process. Moreover, Madgicx’s Creative Workflow is flexible, allowing users to decide how much of the platform they want to utilize.
Best For: Marketers working for eCommerce businesses
Pricing: Madgicx offers various pricing plans based on the features and level of service required. Pricing is available on request.
Main Features:
- Ad Library
- Bulk Editing
- Batch Uploading
- Creative Optimization
- Campaign Dashboard
- Campaign Optimization
Positive Review:
A happy user on G2 shares:
“I've been using the app for roughly two weeks and it's been an incredible experience. The AI capabilities have replaced tasks I previously outsourced to consultants, offering both efficiency and cost savings. What stands out most, however, is the exceptional onboarding process and the support team. They've provided personalized assistance every step of the way, ensuring a smooth setup and ongoing support that truly exceeds expectations.”
What should be improved:
“Madgicx offers several features that are currently in beta, indicating they are still in the testing phase and may not function perfectly. One such feature is the AI marketer, which has been reported to not always update at the expected times. This can lead to inconsistencies in performance and may affect the overall user experience.
Additionally, the "ask the AI marketer" function, designed to allow users to submit queries or requests, confirms receipt of these questions but lacks clarity on the follow-up process. Users are left without information regarding when or how their inquiries will be addressed. This lack of communication can lead to confusion and uncertainty, making it difficult for users to rely on this feature for timely assistance or feedback"
Don’t stop at creative automation: streamline the whole media buying process and maximize efficiency
Of course, the problem you’re looking to fix is your asset production. Creatives on auto-pilot mean you can spend more time thinking about strategic design decisions and running A/B tests, ensuring each ad has a positive ROAS. Hunch lets you scale your creative testing and use up to 20 templates per single catalog, ensuring the right ad is delivered to the right user.
But here’s the thing: Automating your creative production is only one part of the equation. Your campaign doesn’t end with creating the assets you need.
You still have to expend resources on launching campaigns, monitoring them, and optimizing them manually for different ad networks, channels, and markets.
Choosing a platform like Hunch that combines creative automation and campaign launch into a single tool allows you to run campaigns from a single platform. This saves you from switching contexts often, paying for different services, and frees up even more time so you can focus on running successful campaigns.
Hunch has helped launch over 120+ million automated ads and achieve a 2.3x incremental ROAS lift.
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