Programmatic is dumbing down creative, and AI alone will not fix it: Rob Leach

Rob Leach, General Manager, APAC, Kargo, used his spotlight session at the e4m Real Time Programmatic Advertising Conference 2026 to argue that creative is the most undervalued lever in digital advertising. His topic was "Can Creative Survive a Programmatic World?"

Leach began with the attention problem. Consumers see thousands of ads daily and have trained themselves to look away, he said, with about 70% of served banners never registered by a human brain. "You guys pay for them because they are served but they create no brand impact whatsoever." Over 60% of consumers actively avoid advertising, but he insisted people do not hate ads. "What they hate is poorly created badly targeted advertising."

He cited Ipsos research attributing 75% of an ad's ability to form brand-linked memories to creative, and Nielsen's finding that almost half of an ad's impact comes from creative quality. Yet the industry keeps investing elsewhere. This year's big ad tech deals, he noted, were all about data and technology. "Creative is always the bridesmaid and never the bride in the digital advertising world."

Programmatic, Leach argued, has made this worse. Creative is pushed to the lowest common denominator to squeeze through automated pipes, and the obsession with video completion rate and in-view time has turned delivery metrics into KPIs. "Just because an ad was in view for a long time, that doesn't mean that any human actually saw the ad." Kargo calls these hygiene metrics. He did not want them thrown out, only put in their place, because they say nothing about awareness or purchase intent.

Kargo, a 20-year-old American ad tech firm that has operated in Asia-Pacific for 10 to 11 years, calls its answer "putting the art into ad tech". Leach said its enhanced formats deliver a 30% increase in click-through rate over standard IAB banners and a 30% lift in brand consideration. He also cited MediaScience research showing enhanced creative is 80% more effective at driving unaided recall.

On AI, Leach was clear that it will change creative strategy even more than media buying, but not replace judgment. "AI cannot replace taste." He showed an AI-generated ad that looked fine but average, because generative models default to the most common data points. "AI will always surface safe. Humans push the boundaries."

Combined, the two allow creative at scale. Kargo's "create once, run everywhere" approach adapts one set of assets across screens, formats and moments, with banners changing in real time to reflect weather, location, mood and context. Leach said Kargo builds the creative at no charge as part of its offering.

He closed with a line from a Disney Cruises marketing head, which he said captured his argument. "Logic makes you right, magic makes you remembered."