A new study from WARC and LIONS Advisory, in partnership with TikTok, found that 90% of marketers now view AI as an established part of the creative toolkit, but only 45% say it has significantly improved creative quality. The research, based on a survey of 400 marketers across the UK, US, Australia, and Brazil, argues that brands can build a lasting advantage by feeding generative AI with real-time community signals rather than relying only on traditional demographic data.
AI boosts volume but not necessarily quality
The report, "The new creative advantage: How community signals are reshaping creative success in the age of AI," reveals a gap between output and impact. While 88% of respondents said generative AI has increased the volume of creative work, only 45% reported a meaningful jump in quality. For professionals looking to sharpen their skills, resources on AI for Marketing and AI for Creatives are becoming essential as these tools reshape daily workflows.
Despite the widespread use of AI, inputs remain outdated. Some 67% of marketers still use demographic data as the primary prompt when briefing AI tools, even though 59% agreed that traditional demographic segmentation is losing effectiveness. Only 17% consistently include community or audience insights in their generative AI workflows.
Lexi Wolf, Head of Thought Leadership at LIONS Advisory, said: "WARC's Marketer's Toolkit 2026 found that belief in the effectiveness of demographic segmentation is waning. Yet this study with TikTok found that demographics were still the number one input marketers used to brief AI. Meanwhile, participatory media environments are giving us something far richer: real-time signals from people who search, comment, share, remix, create and buy."
Community signals become a competitive advantage
The research found that 86% of marketers expect audience behaviour and community signals to have a greater influence on creative development over the next three years. Brands that combine AI with these signals, the study suggests, can create work that resonates more deeply and responds faster to cultural shifts.
Andy Yang, Global Head of Creative & Brand Ads at TikTok, said: "The brands winning today are not the ones using AI to generate the most content. They are the ones learning the fastest from the people they serve. We call it cultural intelligence, and it is fast becoming advertisers' most durable competitive advantage."
The Intelligence Loop: linking AI and audience participation
The report introduces the "Intelligence Loop," a framework that describes a continuous cycle of learning. Community participation generates cultural and behavioural signals, those signals reveal emerging demand, the insights inform AI creative briefs, and the resulting campaigns drive further audience engagement that feeds the next cycle. This process, according to the report, allows brands to improve creative performance while strengthening product, brand, and media decisions over time.
Marcos Angelides, Managing Director of L'Oréal Lab and Head of AI Operations at Publicis Media, said: "Where the advantage comes is the data that you use to train those models, because AI is only as good as the data it's trained on. You've got to have behavioral data. You've got to know what people actually do, not just what they say they do."
S.C.A.L.E. framework for practical implementation
The study also lays out the S.C.A.L.E. framework to help organisations integrate AI into creative workflows. The five steps are:
- Align media and audience objectives before briefing AI tools.
- Use creators as sources of audience intelligence.
- Incorporate distinctive brand assets into AI systems.
- Establish governance for responsible AI use.
- Treat every campaign as an opportunity for continuous learning and optimisation.
The full report is available on WARC and TikTok.
Why this matters for marketers
The findings signal a shift from using AI to simply produce more content to using it as a learning engine. Marketers who pair generative tools with real-time audience behaviour and cultural participation can move beyond efficiency and toward creative effectiveness. The frameworks offered in the report provide a practical path for teams to stop briefing AI with stale demographic assumptions and start building campaigns that respond to how people actually engage with brands.
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