Kroger, creative data company Vidmob and marketing trade association MMA Global have released a study showing that predictive creative scoring can forecast e-commerce purchase conversion before ad campaigns launch, giving marketers a framework for connecting creative decisions to business outcomes.
The study analyzed 1,934 video and image assets from Kroger campaigns on Meta and DV360, identifying the creative attributes most strongly linked to e-commerce conversion. The model was trained on a full year of 2025 campaign data and validated against an independent first quarter 2026 dataset, enabling it to predict future creative performance rather than explain past results.
The research combined Kroger’s live campaign data, Vidmob’s creative data platform and MMA Global’s research standards to evaluate variables such as visual treatment, messaging, narrative structure, branding and on-screen human interaction.
Key findings
- Predictive creative scoring forecast e-commerce conversion with 81 percent accuracy.
- Creative aligned with the model’s recommendations averaged four times higher conversion rates on Meta and DV360, at up to a 70 percent lower cost per conversion.
- Reallocating media toward higher-scoring creative could generate up to 2.2 times as many conversions from the same advertising budget.
- Creative centered on authentic human experiences outperformed creative focused primarily on products or the act of shopping, a finding that held across platforms.
For Kroger, whose brand purpose is to “Feed the Human Spirit,” campaigns featuring relatable human moments, such as people sharing and enjoying food, produced stronger e-commerce results than transactional shopping imagery or product-first creative.
“Every brand can produce more creative than ever. The advantage now belongs to the ones who know which creative will drive the outcome they need,” said Alex Collmer, founder and executive chairman at Vidmob. “Kroger’s results show what happens when brands treat creative performance as ownable IP: every choice becomes measurable, and every campaign makes the next one smarter.”
“As AI makes creative production ten times faster, judgment has to scale with it,” said Vas Bakopoulos, head of insights and research at MMA Global. “Kroger’s results show predictive scoring can bring that judgment in before a campaign launches.”
The full whitepaper, detailing methodology, creative guidelines and operational considerations for applying predictive scoring, is available for download.
Related: Kroger Precision Marketing Expands Managed-Service Capabilities