The True Driver of Growth? Data-Driven Insights Powered by Ad Intelligence

Ad spend growth is forecasted to grow at 5.9% this year, while programmatic ad spending is expected to reach $817.7 billion (11.1% growth rate), according to Dentsu’s global ad spend forecast.

With ad costs soaring and audience behaviors constantly shifting, digital advertising is more cutthroat than ever.

Traditional methods of running ads based on gut instinct or past success are no longer enough. Brands need real-time insights into what’s working across industries, competitors, and platforms to stay ahead.

This is where ad intelligence platforms come in and provide brands with deep competitor insights, ad creative trends, and data-driven strategies that optimize ROI.

In our interview, Summer Liu, CMO at leading ad intelligence platform SocialPeta reveals how brands can use ad intelligence to outmaneuver competitors, avoid common mistakes, and maximize their ad spend in an increasingly saturated market.

Who is Summer Liu?

Summer Liu is the CMO of SocialPeta, bringing over a decade of experience in mobile, ad intelligence, and mar-tech SaaS. She specializes in B2B marketing, branding, and partner growth, and has helped scale SocialPeta’s global presence across Asia, Europe, and the Americas. With a strong background in DSP traffic expansion and product consultancy, Summer also plays a key role in training teams and sharing marketing insights with partners worldwide.

The way people consume ads changes constantly. This means that brands can’t rely on just creativity to guarantee successful ad campaigns.

Instead, Summer says brands must use data to make informed decisions:

“There are challenges, like the audience having a shorter attention span. For ad creatives, this means they need to speed up and change all the time.”

“Creative lifespan has strongly decreased, so us managers and creative designers have to spare more time to analyze competitors’ trends and make corresponding strategies.”

She also emphasizes the need for brands to constantly adapt in real time instead of relying solely on trial and error.

“Rule number one: do not put your eggs in one bucket. Brands will need to research competitor strategy very well to know creative trends, KOL performance, ASO, app intelligence, and so on.”

This is especially important when deciding which channels — both traditional channels and out-of-the-box options like Discord and in-app ads — should be a part of the overall ad strategy:

“Advertisers seek more hybrid ways to do growth, like combining with KOL marketing or community marketing on Discord and so on, to achieve better ROI in general,” she adds.

Helping You Gain Competitive Edge

SocialPeta has been in the game for nearly a decade, evolving into one of the most comprehensive ad intelligence platforms available today.

Throughout the years, it has made the growth process easier for both brands and advertisers.

Instead of blindly guessing what works, brands can track what’s performing best in their industry and replicate winning strategies with precision.

SocialPeta’s key advantage? Its vast data coverage.

“To elaborate, we have 40 global networks on a creative level, over 1.6 billion ads, which makes us the best coverage compared with other players,” Summer shares.

But it’s not just about big data — it’s about smart data.

SocialPeta continually refines its insights, offering advanced features that go beyond just ad tracking.

The platform also provides network distribution data at the advertiser level, AI-driven image analysis, and soon, AI video analysis.

“I think such a sufficiently superior both quantity and quality of insights make us extraordinary,” she adds.

Overall, this assists businesses in the following ways:

• Find inspiration for ads thanks to massive amounts of available creative data
• Monitor competitors’ marketing strategies and ad budgets
• Perform advanced research into global ad analytics before entering new markets
• Save on research costs and allow for real-time adjustments to ad strategies

Mobile Gaming Ads: An Underutilized Ad Platform

According to SocialPeta’s 2024 Global Mobile Games Marketing Trends & Insights White Paper, mobile game advertising is a widely growing platform:

Despite this, it’s an often overlooked side of digital advertising. This is because gamers are still often seen through the old teenage-boy stereotype.

However, a report from Deloitte outlined that mobile gamers are evenly split between males and females globally. In key mobile gaming regions like Southeast Asia, women slightly outnumber (53%) male mobile gamers.

This shift in demographics highlights a major opportunity for brands: the chance to tap into a broader, more diverse mobile gaming audience.

With ad intelligence tools, advertisers can tailor their creatives to resonate with a more diverse player base — moving beyond outdated assumptions and tapping into a wider, more engaged market.

Summer explains that SocialPeta’s insights are already being used by major brands, including Garena, a gaming giant in Southeast Asia.

“Garena can access a huge database of over 1.6 billion ad data, which would help them in multi-dimensional data analysis,” Summer shares.

By leveraging SocialPeta, Garena was able to draw inspiration from high-performing ad creatives, analyze exactly where competitors were investing, and scale their own campaigns more efficiently.

Garena’s use of ad intelligence is telling, especially for advertisers looking to reach new audiences more efficiently, from both an ad spend and ad channel perspective.

The Rise of AI in Digital Advertising

Of course, the use of ad intelligence stretches beyond the gaming industry.

While mobile games have long been a core focus, Summer says AI apps and short-form video platforms are now some of the biggest adopters of these insights.

“The figure for new-coming products is pretty overwhelming, and the competition for those apps has never been so fierce.”

“They can research the winning creatives and networks before the campaign starts, which saves time and cost,” Summer says.

For these industries, every ad dollar counts.

Leveraging ad intelligence helps by showing them what works before launching campaigns, tracking network performance, and benchmarking against competitors.

Despite the clear benefits of ad intelligence, many businesses still make mistakes in how they use it.

One of the most common is blindly copying big-brand creatives without considering IP restrictions.

“Once their competitor finds this, they will seek arbitration from Facebook or Google,” she warns.

Another mistake, Summer shares, is replicating successful ads without adding unique brand elements.

“They may directly copy the creative without combining their own uniqueness or characters.”

Fortunately, these mistakes are becoming less common as the industry evolves.

“The market is pretty fair and transparent. These mistakes are less and less,” Summer says.

Instead of copying, brands should focus on learning from competitor insights and adapting them to refine their own identity.

What’s Next for Digital Advertising?

Looking ahead, Summer predicts that AI-generated ads will dominate the digital ad space.

“The biggest trend we have to say is the AI trend. It started in 2023 after ChatGPT's launch and Midjourney’s wide usage.

We first saw lots of creatives made from AI tools in role-play game genres, now we see it spreading to strategy games, card games, and so on,” she explains.

AI-generated ads have become increasingly common in mainstream marketing, delivering mixed results.

 

 

 

 

 

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This trend extends to mobile gaming advertising, as Summer notes that some gaming advertisers in genres like SLG (simulation and strategy games) use more than 80% AI-made ads in their paid campaigns.

“This year, there are more mature tools that can change normal UA without a design background and can soon make 30 videos a day. This sounds insane, but it’s real,” Summer shares.

Given how digital advertising is becoming more competitive, expensive, and fast-moving, brands can’t afford to be outdated.

Thankfully, advertisers can tap ad intelligence tools like SocialPeta and AI-powered creative solutions to offer the insights and efficiency needed to keep up with competitors — and get ahead.