What are Creative Playbooks?
Creative Playbooks is a powerful analytics tool designed for quick reporting and exploration of your most recent creative performance. Think of it as a focused, streamlined version of Creative Affinity, giving you a snapshot of what's been working for client ads since last year to the present day.
The goal of Playbooks is to surface timely insights that you can act on immediately, helping you make faster, data-driven decisions for your creative and campaign strategies.
Creative Playbooks shows a detailed Client View for the specific client's performance, benchmarked against their own history and the industry average.
Getting Started
By default, Creative Playbooks analyzes data from the previous year up to the current date to ensure you are always working with recent and relevant information. You can use the filters at the top of the page to customize your view. All the familiar filters from Creative Affinity—such as platform, funnel stage, ad format, and more—are available for you to use.
To get the most from Creative Affinity, connect the integrations that power nova.
Required:
Facebook Ads
Meta Images + Videos OR
For deeper metrics (LTV, Affinity Score):
Shopify or another eCommerce platform
Google Analytics 4
Need help? Chat with our team anytime via the bottom-right corner of nova.
Client View: Deep Dive into a Single Client
This view provides a comprehensive breakdown of an individual client's creative performance.
1. Ad Distribution
What You're Seeing: Two charts that visualize your client’s active ad landscape.
Ad Distribution by Platform: A breakdown of how many ads are running on Meta, TikTok, and YouTube.
Ad Format Distribution: A count of how many ads are images, videos, or carousels.
How to Use It: Quickly assess if the client’s ad distribution aligns with their strategy. Are they overly reliant on one platform or format? Is there an opportunity to diversify?
2. KPI Performance
What You're Seeing: A performance summary across key metrics: Revenue, LTV, Affinity Score, CPA, Spend, Conversions, and ROAS.
How to Use It: Each KPI is compared against two crucial benchmarks:
The industry average for the same time period.
The client's own performance from the previous period.
This allows you to instantly see if the client is outperforming competitors and improving over time.
3. Top & Underperforming Ads
What You're Seeing: Two galleries showcasing the top 9 and bottom 9 performing ads for the selected time period. By default, ads are ranked by LTV, but you can easily switch the ranking metric to Affinity Score, ROAS, Spend, or any other available KPI.
How to Use It:
Top Ads: Identify your "champion" creatives. Use these as inspiration for new content or consider increasing their budget.
Underperforming Ads: Quickly spot creatives that are not delivering results and consider pausing or re-evaluating them.
4. LTV vs. Affinity Score Decision Matrix
What You're Seeing: A four-quadrant matrix that plots your client's ads based on their Lifetime Value (LTV) and Affinity Score. This helps you understand which ads are not only engaging but are also attracting high-value customers.
Understanding the LTV vs. Affinity Score Decision Matrix
This matrix is your guide for making strategic decisions by balancing two critical metrics:
Lifetime Value (LTV), which tells you if an ad appeals to high-value customers, and Affinity Score, which tells you if an ad is performing well based on engagement and conversion metrics.
Upper-Right Quadrant: High LTV & High Affinity Score
What it Means: This is the ideal scenario. These ads are resonating with your audience and attracting customers who generate significant long-term value.
Action: Capitalize on this success. Use these ads as inspiration for new creative concepts or consider increasing their spend to maximize impact.
Upper-Left Quadrant: High LTV & Low Affinity Score
What it Means: The ad is successfully reaching a high-value audience, but its performance is weak.
Action: The audience is right, but the creative needs work. Use the comparison feature to understand why the Affinity Score is low and identify areas for improvement without changing the targeting.
Lower-Left Quadrant: Low LTV & Low Affinity Score
What it Means: A clear red flag. The ad is not appealing to high-value customers, and it's not performing well in general.
Action: This strategy is not working. It's time to significantly overhaul the creative and targeting or pause the ad entirely to avoid wasted spend.
Lower-Right Quadrant: Low LTV & High Affinity Score
What it Means: The ad is engaging and performs well, but it is not attracting your most valuable customer segments.
Action: The creative is effective, but the targeting is off. Refine your audience targeting to direct these high-performing ads toward customer segments with higher potential LTV.
6. KPI Trends
What You're Seeing: A trendline graph showing the performance of key metrics (Revenue, LTV, Affinity Score, etc.) over the last three months plus the current month.
How to Use It: Easily visualize the client's performance trajectory. Are KPIs trending up or down? Use this to add context to weekly or monthly performance reports.
7. Recommendations
What You're Seeing: Actionable strategies to improve creative performance, powered by Meta's recommendation engine. Note: This is only applicable to Meta ads.
How to Use It: Review these suggestions to find quick wins and optimization opportunities for your Meta campaigns.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
1. What is the main difference between Creative Playbooks and the full Creative Affinity tool? Creative Playbooks is designed for speed and convenience, providing a focused look at your most recent creative performance (from the last quarter to the current date). It's perfect for quick reporting and identifying high-level trends. Creative Affinity is a more powerful, in-depth tool for granular analysis, allowing you to set custom date ranges and dig deeper into specific campaigns, ad sets, and ads over longer periods.
2. How is the "previous period" benchmark calculated in the KPI Performance section? The "previous period" benchmark compares the client's or industry's performance in the current timeframe to their performance in the equivalent timeframe immediately prior. For example, if the current view analyzes data from April 1st to today, the "previous period" would be the quarter before that (January 1st - March 31st).
3. Can I change the date range for the dashboard? The primary date range for Creative Playbooks is fixed, analyzing data from the previous quarter up to the current date. This ensures the insights are always timely and relevant for quick decision-making. However, you can use the filters at the top of the page (e.g., platform, funnel stage) to refine the data shown within this fixed timeframe.
4. Where do the LTV and Affinity Score metrics come from? These are the same core metrics used in the main Creative Affinity tool.
Affinity Score is a composite score showing how engaging and effective a creative is based on KPIs like ROAS, conversions, and CTR and adjusted for each platform.
Lifetime Value (LTV) quantifies the median revenue generated by customers who were influenced by an ad and later made a purchase.
5. I only see recommendations from Meta. Are there recommendations for other platforms? Currently, the recommendations feature is powered exclusively by Meta's recommendation engine and is only applicable to Meta ads.
6. How do I export my findings? You can export individual components of the dashboard, such as the "Top Performing Ads" gallery or the "KPI Trends" chart, by clicking the "Export" button located on each module. This allows you to pull specific data for reports and presentations. An export of the entire dashboard in a single click is not available.