Q&A: Challenging the content algorithm with media, production, and automation

Creating a single piece of content has never been easier. With powerful tools, advanced platforms, and AI-driven automation, what once took hours can now be done in minutes.

But creating one piece is not the challenge, the real complexity lies in what comes next. When everyone can produce content at speed, volume is no longer a competitive advantage. What matters then is brand guardianship, consistency across platforms, and content effectiveness.

And today’s content ecosystem comes with an additional layer of complexity: algorithms now decide what rises and what disappears. According to the Dentsu Creatives 2025 CMO Report, 87% of senior marketing decision makers agree that algorithms are having a bigger influence on what people see and buy.

For content to perform, the challenge is producing work that can stand out in a feed where platforms process thousands of new assets every day. Campaign performance now comes down to something more basic: whether brands have quality content, and whether they’re able to create a consistent experience across platforms and touchpoints.

A content + media solution

Content production only creates value when it is tied directly to performance. But producing better content and creative at scale doesn’t happen in isolation. Creative decisions now influence media performance, and media data increasingly shapes what creative should be produced next. In other words, content and media can no longer operate as separate disciplines.

That means scaling output through AI alone is not enough. Without a seat at the strategy table, automation simply produces more content, not better results. The goal is to identify which ideas are worth scaling, plan campaigns iteratively, test variations quickly, and evolve creative based on real performance signals. That’s where media and production working in harmony is critical to producing real business results.

Tag is working closely with Carat, one of the world’s leading media agencies, to rethink how creative production and media work together. To understand how these tech-led solutions are pushing the boundaries of production and media, we spoke to Jonathan Forage, Tag’s Growth Director for APAC, and Andrew Macdonald, National Head of Digital for Carat Australia.

Here’s what they had to say on all things media, production, and automation.

Challenging the content algorithm

It may seem like content production has never been easier, yet achieving strong campaign performance feels harder than ever. What changes in the platform and media landscape are driving this shift?

 Jonathan: With content volumes increasing drastically across branded, creator, and editorial channels, you've got algorithms determining what performs within a sea of content while also trying to capture advertising dollars from everyone. Ultimately, it’s getting harder to stand out because algorithms are pushing campaigns toward the mean.  

That creates a new challenge for marketers: performance thinking now needs to work hand in hand with creative and storytelling if marketing is going to deliver real ROI.

Andrew: To add to that, the platforms themselves have changed quite a bit.

Take Meta, for example. They recently overhauled their ad retrieval system, and the new AI engine is designed to process a much larger volume of creative assets. What that means in practice is that the platform can now test and learn from far more variations than before.

So, performance is increasingly shaped by the range and quality of creative a brand puts into the system, not just how precisely you target audiences.

And it’s not just Meta. Across most major platforms, algorithms are doing more of the heavy lifting. In a way, marketers are now feeding systems that reward relevance, freshness, and a steady supply of strong creative.

On that note, what are you noticing in terms of where campaigns tend to break down most often today between strategy, media, and production?

Jonathan: Right now, traditional siloed agency models are being challenged to connect in ways they’ve never had to before. It’s no longer feasible for everyone to ‘stay in their lane’ and wait until a performance report comes out to decide what to do next.  Now, unless teams are cross-functional and collaborative, campaigns will (and do) break down.

Andrew: Campaigns also tend to suffer from creative fatigue. Attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, especially in younger audiences while at the same time, algorithmic consumption is increasing. As a result, the same creative is exposed to audiences much faster than before.

This means assets that once delivered reliable performance are starting to fatigue and ‘decay’ more quickly. When the same message is overserved, engagement drops and costs begin to rise as brands try to maintain the same outcomes.

To counter that, agencies need to closely monitor signals such as frequency, CTR, and CPM, and increasingly advise clients to plan for faster creative rotation and variation.

When you speak with clients, what pressures come up most often: speed, scale, or performance?

Jonathan: Usually, it’s all three in one breath. Clients want agencies to be able to solve for all of them in a confident, unified way.  

• Speed means more time in-market selling, hence driving better sales results.

• Scale is critical to navigate the complex channel mix, especially for brands wanting to show up across markets.

• And performance remains critical as budget pressure forces a hyper focus on ROI.

That raises an important question on how marketing teams are structured. Production teams used to sit at the end of the process. Why is that model no longer viable today?

Jonathan: To help create creative assets that will perform, at a higher volume while maintaining brand integrity, production needs to have a seat at the table far earlier.

Many of the levers that influence campaign performance now directly sit within production, from channel mix and asset variation to modularity, localization, dynamic offers, and creative fatigue. If you bring teams in only after strategy and media are set, much of the campaign’s optimizations potential is already off the table.

You mentioned volume. What role does creative volume now play in driving campaign performance?

Andrew: Brands that only have a handful of assets in the market hit a ceiling, fast.

With limited assets, the platform has fewer options to match different audiences, contexts, and placements, so learning slows and performance becomes fragile.

More variations unlock two things: faster learning and more opportunities for a campaign to perform. Take Google as an example. They consistently emphasize that asset variety helps AI-driven campaigns perform better because the system can test combinations and tailor messages to user intent at scale.

We’re seeing this play out in the results across the AI-powered campaign types we’re continuing to scale for our clients.

What does ‘owning a seat at the table’ mean now for production?

Jonathan: That means a few things:

• Designing assets with scalability in mind. Considering campaigns in multiple dynamic phases with optimization loops between them.

• Building clear data and insight feeds, with structures in-place to be able to activate against them. Understanding what fit-for-channel creative truly means and being able to prove it.

It’s shifting from “How do we make this?” to “How will this perform, scale and optimize over time?”

How does closer integration between media and production, like the model Tag is building with Carat, change the way you plan, optimize, and scale campaigns?

Andrew: I believe that integration between media, creative and production integration is more important than ever. When we plan and execute media campaigns in partnership with Tag Worldwide, we work towards a shared objective and a common understanding of the client. That collaboration allows production to become part of the performance engine.

We regularly advise our creative leads on how AI and campaign automation is evolving. We’re already leaning into this with Tag to keep pace with fatigue requirements while still improving effectiveness.

Jonathan: Working more closely with Carat and the media practice has pushed us to think further upstream, even before the production brief is written. Having media and production in the room together earlier allows us to develop new solutions for clients that just wouldn’t have emerged if the teams worked separately.

How are you using AI and automation (like Tag’s Content Engine or Carat’s Media ++) to create more of the right content to drive results? 

Jonathan: We’ve shifted our philosophy toward Content Intelligence. The idea is simple: every stage of the process should be shaped by an integrated performance lens. We approach this across three key areas:

• Intelligent Creative – Using AI tools to better inform our creative briefs, improve speed and quality, and pre-validate ideas and key visuals to ensure they will perform in-market.

• Intelligent Production – Equipping our design and production teams with AI tools to increase the speed, scale, and creative possibilities available to tell our clients’ brand stories in new ways.

• Intelligent Delivery – Using AI and Automation to more effectively deliver fit-for-channel adaptation of creative in a way that can unlock greater personalization and performance in media.

Andrew: On this front, we’re seeing great success in partnering with Tag who are consistently deploying these solutions for our clients.

Finally, what is your advice for brands looking to create outlier performance in this more competitive environment?

Andrew: Outlier performance comes from learning velocity: a clear experimentation plan, tight feedback loops, and a content and creator pipeline that can produce distinct variations quickly. That’s the biggest difference between brands that perform, and those that get left behind.

The winners will be the ones that learn faster.

The future of performance marketing

As Jonathan and Andrew emphasize, the future of performance marketing won’t belong to the teams that produce the most content. It will belong to the ones that learn the fastest. That means tighter collaboration, smarter automation, and creative built with production and outcomes in mind from day one.

Dentsu's Media++ strategy and Tag’s Content Engine platform point to what that future can look like: a model where media, production, data, and AI operate as one connected engine, focused not on producing more for the sake of it, but on creating work that learns, improves, and delivers greater impact over time.