Consumer Rejection of Bad Ads Fuels a Creative Reboot

Consumers are dealing with an unprecedented level of media fragmentation and ad overload. Omnicom's latest research makes the stakes clear: 80% of respondents say a bad ad is worse than no ad at all, and the majority actively try to ignore advertising. Yet the same survey reveals a powerful flipside. When ads feel relatable (84% connect), contextually relevant (76% drawn in) and well-timed (78% feel a connection), they build a bridge to the consumer — and 30% say a better ad experience directly increases their likelihood of buying.

This tension is what Omnicom calls the "connected content" paradigm: a shift from producing a hero asset and slicing it into channel-specific bits, to building a living system that senses and responds to consumer, culture, commerce and category signals in real time. Alissa Hansen, CEO of Omnicom Production North America, describes it as moving from "spray and pray" to "catch and release" — catching the signals that matter and releasing content that fits the moment, whether it's a World Cup broadcast or a 'Bridgerton' binge.

Technology, notably artificial intelligence, is the engine behind this shift. The goal is not to automate human creativity out of existence, but to make the creative process continuously adaptive, a networked set of "agentic systems" that learn and improve as consumer behaviour evolves. For Joanna O'Connell, Omnicom Media Group's chief intelligence officer, that is the only way to keep pace: "Culture moves too fast. People move too fast. Second-screening is real."

How 'Catch and Release' Content Changes the Marketing Mandate

The Omnicom Play: Thought Leadership With a Commercial Edge

As a holding company whose revenues depend on media planning and creative services, Omnicom has a clear interest in positioning the connected content model as the industry's next must-have. Its research provides a compelling evidence base to steer client conversations toward more integrated, tech-enabled engagements — the kind that can command higher fees and longer retainer cycles than one-off campaigns. That doesn't invalidate the insights, but it explains the urgency in the agency's language: the connected content future is also the future of agency profitability.

Rethinking the Creative Assembly Line

The traditional campaign model treats creative development as a linear process: conceive a big idea, produce an anthem spot, then atomise it for digital and social. O'Connell argues this is simply extending a legacy approach into new channels. In the connected content world, creative and media must be briefed simultaneously and treated as co-equal partners. This has profound implications for how marketing departments are structured, how agency contracts are written, and how success is measured — shifting from a single campaign's ROI to the aggregate performance of a constantly evolving system.

Where AI Becomes Non-Negotiable

Managing thousands of creative variations across a web of signals is beyond human capacity alone. O'Connell is explicit: "Moving to a system of continuous learning, change and adaptation — you cannot do that without these technologies." This points to a future where AI-driven content generation, dynamic creative optimisation and real-time analytics are embedded into every stage, from briefing to measurement. For marketers, this means building or buying capabilities that may not yet exist inside their organisations.

Pragmatic Steps into the Connected Content Era

  • Brief creative and media together from day one. Omnicom's O'Connell says treating them as "co-equal partners" is a crucial starting point to break silos and ensure the big idea is designed to live across every signal and channel.
  • Audit your creative production for gaps. Mapping where your current process breaks down reveals the areas where signal-led, AI-augmented content can have the biggest immediate impact, per Omnicom's recommendation.
  • Pilot a signal-driven approach in a single channel. Don't try to overhaul everything at once. Choose one channel — perhaps shoppable video during a known lean-back moment, as Hansen suggests with the 'Bridgerton' example — and test the four-dimensional signal model (consumer, culture, commerce, category) against a control asset.
  • Invest in the technology that makes adaptation continuous. Without AI-powered systems, the "catch and release" model is unworkable at scale. Start evaluating dynamic creative platforms that can ingest real-time consumer and contextual data.