Creative-first flow

Overview

The Creative-first flow provides a new, streamlined path for establishing ad campaigns in Axon.

You build your creative sets first, then attach them to one or more campaigns in a single step. This approach allows you to share a single creative set across multiple active campaigns seamlessly. This consolidates your asset tracking and data history under a single source of truth.

The existing campaign-first workflow remains fully functional. Creative-First is simply a faster path that optimizes workflow efficiency and data cleanliness.

Key features & workflows

1. Creating and managing sets from the Media page

You no longer need to look inside or open a campaign to build creative assets. You can initialize everything directly from the Media page.

• Direct creation: Select any approved video, interactive, or image asset on the Media page and click Create creative set to bundle them immediately.
• Bulk asset management: Add or remove assets from one or multiple creative sets, in bulk, from the Media page.

2. The dedicated Creative Sets tab

Axon Ads Manager now features a dedicated Creative Sets tab in the main left-hand navigation menu.

• Cross-campaign visibility: The dashboard lists every creative set along with a column that shows exactly how many (and which) active campaigns use that set.
• Global editing & multi-campaign syncing: Click Edit on a creative set from this page to swap assets or to adjust settings globally. After you confirm your changes, they push out and update every associated campaign instantly.
• Destination URL logic: Each creative set supports one centralized destination URL rule. You can toggle it to:
  • Use Campaign URL: Inherit whichever landing page link you configure at the individual campaign level.
  • Use Another URL: Input a specific URL directly to the creative set that persists across all campaigns it belongs to.

3. Streamlined campaign setup & importing

• Pre-filled campaigns: From the Creative Sets directory, you can select your pre-built sets and trigger a Create Campaign command. This opens the campaign creator with your chosen creative sets pre-loaded and ready.
• Smart importing recommendations: When you adjust creatives within an existing campaign page, clicking Import automatically prompts a recommendation to Add creative sets to this campaign (Reuse existing) rather than creating an independent copy. (Note: You can still choose to import a unique copy if you need to split-test distinct landing URLs).

API limitations & delivery behavior

Note: the Management API does not yet fully support the architecture of the Creative-First flow.

• UI-exclusive actions: You cannot add a creative set to additional campaigns or remove a creative set from an associated campaign via the API. You must complete such mapping adjustments through the Ads Manager UI dashboard.
• Global status synchronization: When a creative set is shared across different campaigns, it points to the exact same asset object underneath. Consequently, if you change the delivery status via the API this executes globally across all campaigns:
  • Pausing a multi-campaign creative set via the API pauses it across all active campaigns.
  • Setting live a paused multi-campaign creative set via the API resumes it across all active campaigns.

If you'd like a creative set to stop showing in one campaign but still appear in others, you can remove it from the campaign rather than pausing.