As much as 90% of global campaign toolkits never make it to market, with the average F500 company estimated to be spending an estimated £20 million on work that never sees the light of day.

Revealed by marketing tech firm CreativeX at this year’s Cannes Lions, a new piece of research also indicated that just under half (45%) of core global assets produced are never used.

Having worked with leading international brands such as Diageo, Bayer and Unilever, CreativeX has analysed over 1,000 core assets at the heart of a brand’s campaign toolkit before checking for their presence across 250,000 ads to see how often they made it to market.

It found that around 45% of these assets are never used in any capacity, ending up lost in the handoff between production and media functions, or global and local teams.

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According to CreativeX, this issues persists due to a ‘a lack of visibility into the end-to-end content production process’, with brands having patchy data on the activation, adaptation, and media investment of all their content investments.

“Our ads aren’t wearing out. In fact, they’re barely wearing in. 45% of ads aren’t even given a chance to wear-in,” CreativeX founder, Anastasia Leng said.

“This represents a large opportunity for greater budget efficiency and brings to the forefront the measurement and accountability gaps in our content supply chain, which AI is uniquely positioned to help address.”