“the dirty secret is a lot of these creative shops had templates and they gave you the same ads they were giving to your competitor right there's just no way now once you've got to build this stuff yourself and it's got to really be informed by deep knowledge of your product”

Creative Agencies Used Templates Shared Across Competitors — In-House Is Now a Necessity

Eric Seufert exposes the pre-ATT creative agency model: most shops ran lightly-customised template ads for competing apps simultaneously. That drove CPM inflation as competitors bid against each other using the same creative concepts. Post-ATT, with spray-and-pray no longer viable and conceptual distinctness now the key differentiator, in-housing creative is not optional — it is the only way to build real competitive advantage in paid UA.