Creative-first flow

Overview

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

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

AppLovin 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 same asset object. 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 want a creative set to stop showing in one campaign but still appear in others, you can remove it from the campaign rather than pausing.