Brands spend approximately $150B a year producing advertising content globally, according to XR analysis. Yet up to half the assets go unused, never downloaded, delivered, or aired. That’s $75B in wasted creative spend annually.

Now, with generative AI poised to flood content pipelines with exponentially more variants, versions, and localizations, the stakes are even higher. Without visibility into which assets actually get used, you’re not solving the problem – you’re scaling it.

The next efficiency breakthrough in advertising isn’t just about faster production, it’s about knowing what you already have. By monitoring and measuring creative usage, brands can produce less and reuse more, saving both time and money. The XR Platform makes this possible, giving CMOs the visibility they have been missing. It surfaces which assets are used, which sit idle, and where existing content can be repurposed instead of commissioning costly new production.  

The $75B Question No One Asks

Most marketing ops dashboards start once media money is in market, tracking impressions served, CPMs and CTRs. We’re great at optimizing live spend; shifting budgets, tweaking bids, pausing weak creative. But almost no one asks the upstream question: “Did we ever actually use the assets we paid to produce?”

Across XR’s clients, more than half of produced advertising assets go unused. They are created, approved, archived, and then forgotten. For some of the world’s biggest ad spenders, dormancy rates on specific campaigns have spiked as high as 90%, according to XR’s analysis.

Multiply that across the estimated $150B in annual production spend, and you're looking at $75B in unused creative every year.

Why So Much Creative Goes Unused

1. Fragmented Pipelines

Ad production, versioning, trafficking, activation, and reporting often live in separate systems with different partners, making it easy for creative assets to slip through the cracks.

2. Over‑Production vs. Reality

Annual advertising plans try to cover every market and ad format, but mid-year budget cuts shrink the launch list, leaving leftover assets unused.

3. Shelf‑Life Compression

Fast moving social media cycles and seasonal promotions move faster than clearance and localization workflows can keep up.

4. Searchability Failure

Scattered drives, inconsistent metadata, and multiple DAMs make approved ad creative hard to find. The result? Marketers spend more time and money recreating existing assets.

The impact goes beyond wasted budget. It slows production, increases carbon emissions from unnecessary shoots, and creates brand and message inconsistencies when rushed re‑makes miss the mark.

How XR Helps Marketers Track and Activate What Matters

XR is a global platform connecting the entire advertising ops supply chain, from payroll and rights tracking to asset management and playout anywhere in the world. Sitting between creative production and delivery, XR knows what ads were made, where they are cleared, where they ran, and where they didn’t. We help brands measure usage, uncover dormant spend, and recommend reuse before new production dollars are spent.
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To find out how you can monitor and measure your creative usage, get in touch below.