Ad industry associations unite to launch world’s first LLM benchmark for creativity

Springboards, an AI platform accelerating creativity in advertising, and a collective of global advertising and marketing associations, creative leaders, and AI experts – including ACA (Advertising Council Australia), 4As (American Association of Advertising Agencies), APG, D&AD, IAA (International Advertising Association), IPA, and The One Club for Creativity – has announced an initiative to establish the first comprehensive benchmark designed to evaluate the creative instincts of large language models (LLMs) in the context of advertising and creativity.

The initiative seeks to answer a critical question: Which LLMs are most useful for creative inspiration, ideation, variation, and problem-solving across the advertising process? At a time when AI tools are increasingly embedded in the workflows of strategists and creatives, this benchmark fills a crucial gap in industry knowledge.

Says Pip Bingemann, CEO/Cofounder at Springboards: “Existing AI benchmarks test logic, accuracy, and comprehension. But advertising isn’t about right answers, it’s about originality, insight, and impact. This will be the first benchmark designed around the real creative instincts we value in agencies and brands so that people in creative industries can understand what models are good for the work they do.”

The initiative is supported by a technical and research team that includes PhDs in machine learning, AI engineers, and former researchers from Google. Together, they’ve designed a system that blends data analysis with human taste to reveal which models excel across various types of creative thinking.

The evaluation departs from traditional AI testing methods by focusing on creative instincts, not coached outputs.

Key criteria include:

• • Human judgment of insight, idea, and “wild” idea quality
• • Creative variance (how different or repetitive model responses are)
• • Creative problem-solving tests to measure the ability to think outside the box
• • AI versus human judging comparisons to assess alignment with human taste

Participants globally will judge outputs in a “Tinder for Ideas” style experience, receiving personal insights about their creative preferences and the LLMs that best match them.

Says Tony Hale, CEO, Advertising Council Australia: “This benchmark is an exciting moment for our industry. Harnessing the potential of LLMs to complement and elevate creative thinking is critical. We’re proud to help lead this industry-first initiative, one that’s not just pushing boundaries, but shaping the future of creativity itself.”

Says Tom Roach, VP Brand Strategy at Jellyfish/Brandtech, on behalf of the APG: “There’s a ton of stuff about how good different LLMs are at solving maths problems, coding and logic-based tasks and tests. But that’s not much use for the creative industries. We need to know which models are best at generating new and original creative ideas, but at the moment we’re all flying blind on that. It’s exciting to be involved in a project that can help us be more creative with this incredible new technology and help the industry as a whole make better informed decisions on the AI tech we use to drive better results for our clients.”

Says Zoe Scaman, Founder of Bodacious: “We’re at a crossroads in the creative industries. AI is already embedded in our workflows, shaping ideas and generating outputs, but we’ve had no meaningful way to assess its contribution to creativity itself. This benchmark changes that. It’s not about pitting machines against humans, but about understanding which tools can genuinely elevate our thinking, unlock new directions, and push creative boundaries. If we want to harness AI not just for efficiency but for originality, we need standards rooted in real creative instincts, not just logic and grammar. That’s what this initiative delivers. And that’s why it’s vital, especially now.”

Says James Hurman, Founding Partner of Previously Unavailable: “The future of creativity is human – but AI’s ability to stimulate human creativity is exciting. Especially when we can learn which models produce the kind of interesting, divergent, and sometimes bonkers provocations that trigger our own individual creative brains in just the right way.”

The study is currently accepting participants. Interested individuals can vote on LLM outputs at CreativityBenchmark.ai.

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