For years, the industry has argued about creativity versus effectiveness as if they sit on opposite sides of the table. They don’t.
The ads that endure – those that get remembered, talked about and bought from – are the ones that do three things brilliantly.
- They engage
- They clearly belong to a brand
- They predispose people to choose it.
That’s why, since 2011, Kantar has partnered with StopPress to spotlight New Zealand’s most meaningfully different advertising through the Ad Impact Awards. The framework has always been robust, grounded in how real people respond to advertising.
Quick and confident judgement
What’s changing in 2026 is not the standard – but the intelligence behind how quickly and confidently we can judge it.
This year, Kantar is amplifying its New Zealand Ad Impact Awards using Link AI, its AI‑powered creative effectiveness measurement tool. Not to replace human judgement, but to sharpen it.
Link AI allows Kantar to assess how well an ad is likely to perform across TV, digital, print and outdoor while it’s still shaping culture – not months after the moment has passed. It’s fast, it’s scalable, and it’s grounded in the industry’s most powerful creative effectiveness database.
The result? A more contemporary reflection of how modern campaigns actually live in the wild: across screens, formats and moments.
Last week, Kantar announced the first Ad Impact Award winner to have been measured using Link AI. The March award went to Meadow Fresh’s Fantasy Herd campaign, that let Kiwis draft real cows, score points from farm and milking shed data, and compete for prizes.
It was a perfect case study in what modern creative effectiveness looks like.
Creativity that cuts through clutter
What hasn’t changed is the bar.
Kantar’s commitment remains the same: to celebrate creativity that cuts through clutter, builds brands and drives commercial impact. Creativity that doesn’t just entertain but works.
The Link framework gives marketers decision‑quality intelligence they can use to plan, test, optimise and improve creative at speed, without sacrificing rigour.
As Kantar New Zealand’s Talha Waqas says, “AI doesn’t tell us what good creativity is. It helps us see it more clearly.”
“Link AI is trained on hundreds of thousands of ads and millions of human responses, so when it flags an ad as likely to perform, it’s because the creative signals are there. Strong branding, emotional engagement and clarity of idea. The real power is that marketers can now get that intelligence early enough to act on it, not just admire it in hindsight.”
