19% of Marketers Are Using AI Creatives to Improve UA in H2 2025. Here’s What They’re Trying
With H2 2025 in full swing, growth marketers are juggling the usual headaches with rising costs, tired audiences, and less reliable signals. Budgets aren’t getting bigger, so the work has to get smarter. To see what’s moving the needle, Bidease surveyed 100 marketers about the tactics they’re betting on right now.
One theme cut through the noise: teams that win are treating creative like an engine and powering it with AI. Everything from large language models to neural networks can spin up variations faster, process learnings more quickly, and stay effective in a privacy-tight world. In part three of our series, we map where marketers are putting their chips, why AI-driven creative sits at the center, and how diversification supports it without burning budget. If you missed the first two parts, check them out here and here.
Key Takeaway
- Lead with AI-powered creative optimization as your primary way to steer campaigns. Publish more new ad variants, adapt winning ideas to more channels, and track creative performance across those channels over time.
Which Strategies Marketers Are Actually Using in H2 2025
In H2 2025, user acquisition (UA) is shifting to creative-first tactics. In our survey of 100 growth marketers, three approaches lead adoption: AI-powered creative optimization/generation (19%), user-generated content (UGC) on social (17%), and creator/influencer programs (15%). Teams favor these because they let you produce new ideas quickly, keep fatigue in check, and adapt winning creative to new channels without starting from zero. However, there’s a secondary consideration at play, too. Because these strategies don’t rely on personal data, they’re especially helpful for privacy-first advertisers. Signals that don’t require tracking are rising while heavier, platform-level changes like Apple’s SKAN 4.0 show slower day-to-day use.
“While the biggest performance gains come from the guts of the system—machine learning, targeting, and product quality—creative testing and optimization are powerful levers UA managers can control. AI strengthens those levers, speeding up testing and keeping results moving.”
Dennis Mink, CMO of Bidease
Why AI-Powered Creative Is Leading H2
AI removes three bottlenecks: production time, cross-channel adaptation, and analysis lag. From a single brief, AI produces a slate of variants across hooks, angles, copy, visuals, and CTAs. AI tools rewrite and format variants for each placement so a winning idea can move without a rebuild.
For example, you can use LLMs to quickly summarize results by idea, grouping ads with the same opening, look, offer, and call to action into cohorts. Next, determine what’s working and what isn’t on each channel. Feed those takeaways into your generative AI tool to produce fresh creative versions tailored to each channel’s specs. Keep a quick human check, then put the best into small tests. This is just one way you can use AI to read results faster, turn insights into new creatives sooner, and keep winning ideas moving across channels.
That’s why AI tops the adoption list and ties the rest of the H2 stack together. UGC and creator programs keep the pipeline full by turning simple briefs and short edits of longer videos into a steady stream of on-brand variations, often with the help of AI. Contextual and location-based targeting work better when the ad text and visuals automatically adjust to the content someone’s viewing, the time of day, and their location.
For more industry trends, download The 2025 State of Mobile App Growth Survey.
Diversification Remains the Strategic Foundation
Diversification works best when top creatives work in more than one place, and AI helps you get there fast. With AI, you can take one winning creative and quickly turn it into versions that fit each channel, allowing you to test new channels without rebuilding from scratch or hurting results. To measure success, check how often that shared creative meets your goal in at least two channels within a set window.
This is one more reason why teams are spreading risk across channels – AI makes it easy. In H2 2025, 50% of marketers are diversifying their UA channel mix, compared with 20% doubling down on their highest-return channels and 12% consolidating to fewer platforms. Diversifying gives you backup options: if a platform changes or costs jump, you can shift budget into more performant channels and growth keeps moving.
“Too many marketers still lean on 1–2 channels that performed well last quarter, but H2 requires a more resilient approach. Diversification isn’t just a buzzword anymore; it’s become an imperative. The smartest marketers I know are treating channel diversification like product experimentation, and using AI to make it happen.”
Dennis Mink, CMO of Bidease
We Recommend: Lead With AI Creative and Diversification
The data points to a creative-centric playbook that wins in a privacy-tight, budget-flat half. Make creative your focus, use AI to speed up creative iteration, and spread risk across more channels.
- Operationalize creative velocity with AI. Use generative AI to make 10–20 new versions of each active ad every two weeks. Refresh ads when fewer people watch the opening seconds or click less than usual, and always do a quick human review before anything goes live.
- Make winners travel fast. Re-deploy proven concepts on two to three additional channels within 72 hours, using channel-native hooks, pacing, and formats. Judge success with two simple checks: does the idea hit your goal in the new channel, and are the results close to what you saw in the original channel? If yes, put more budget behind it; if not, pause it and move on to the next idea.
- Use generative AI to power diversification. Turn each winning idea into channel-ready versions and auto-fit the text and visuals to all major ad formats. Run about a 70–20–10 split across proven, scaling, and experimental channels, and optimize toward signals that don’t rely on personal data.
Where This Leaves UA Teams
In H2 2025, the teams winning are the ones using AI to speed up creative work. Keep the path from ideation to testing short, move winning ideas to new channels without rebuilding from scratch, and measure with signals that don’t rely on personal data.
See it in action with the Bidease DSP. Run faster creative cycles and scale what works with confidence. Get a free consultation with a growth expert today. And if you’re following this research series, catch up on the earlier entries for added context: start with the first post, then the second to see how the rest of the stack is shifting in 2025.
Customer retention is the key
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What are the most relevant factors to consider?
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Don’t overspend on growth marketing without good retention rates
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What’s the ideal customer retention rate?
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Next steps to increase your customer retention
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