Why Creative Strategy Should Never Be an Add-On to Media Buying

A lot of media buying agencies proudly advertise things like "Creative included" or "Creative assets as part of your monthly retainer." Sometimes it's an optional add-on service, and sometimes it's presented as if writing a few scripts each month naturally belongs to whoever is inside Meta Ads Manager anyway.

Every time I read that, I wonder who is actually responsible for the creative.

Because if you've ever sat down and built a proper creative testing framework from scratch, researched competitors for hours and watched thousands of ads, you'll know that creative strategy isn't something you quickly squeeze in between checking ROAS and adjusting campaign budgets.

It has become its own profession.

Creative Strategy Didn't Exist Ten Years Ago

One thing that's interesting about creative strategy is that it wasn't even really a role when I started working in e-commerce.

Back then, you had founders, media buyers, designers and maybe somebody creating Facebook ads. The same person often did a little bit of everything because platforms were simpler and Meta rewarded people who understood campaign structures more than anything else.

Fast forward to today and almost everything inside Ads Manager has become smarter. Meta has automated huge parts of what media buyers used to spend years mastering.

That doesn't make media buyers less valuable. Quite the opposite!! There is still an incredible amount of strategy behind scaling accounts properly.

But while Meta has been making campaign management easier, something else has become MUCH harder: Coming up with creatives that people actually want to watch 👀

These Are Two Completely Different Ways Of Thinking

This is where I think people underestimate how different these two roles really are: A media buyer wakes up thinking about campaign structures, attribution, budgets, scaling, learning phases and performance data.

A creative strategist wakes up thinking about something completely different.

Why did people stop scrolling after exactly two seconds?

Why did this hook outperform the other one?

Would this angle resonate better with someone buying for themselves or someone buying for their partner?

Those aren't campaign questions, but these are CREATIVE QUESTIONS. And they require a completely different way of thinking.

"Creative Included" Sounds Great... Until You Think About It

This is where I personally struggle with agencies advertising creative strategy as an add-on. Not because I think media buyers aren't creative. Many of them absolutely are.

But because becoming great at creative strategy requires the same obsession that becoming great at media buying does.

The best media buyers I know spend hours analysing accounts, reading performance data, understanding attribution and testing campaign structures.

The best creative strategists I know spend hours inside Motion, Parker, Meta Ad Library, TikTok Creative Center, Reddit comments, Trustpilot reviews and competitor websites trying to understand why somebody buys one product instead of another.

Those are two completely different jobs. And expecting one person to become exceptional at both is a little bit like asking your architect to also become your electrician because they're already involved in building the house.

Could they probably figure some of it out? Sure.

Would you rather hire somebody whose entire career revolves around electrical systems? Probably.

The Strongest Brands Build Specialists

The brands I've enjoyed working with the most never tried to make one person responsible for everything:

The media buyer focused on buying media.

The creative strategist focused on building concepts and testing frameworks.

Creators focused on performing.

Editors focused on storytelling and pacing.

Each role made the next one better. Nobody tried to become an expert at someone else's craft. Ironically, that's usually when performance improves, because everyone has enough space to become exceptional at what they actually do.