Creative Ranking is ideal for creating an effective shortlist from a large volume of creatives. Because the ranking criteria are already defined by your use case selection, the objective should be short and focused — not a repeat of the criteria.
A Creative Ranking objective needs two things:
A one-line intent statement — why are these creatives being ranked and what decision will the ranking inform?
Any context not captured by the use case — for example, the specific campaign or placement the assets will be used in.
Auto-generating Your Objective from a Context Brief
Instead of writing the objective from scratch, you can upload a Context Brief — a campaign brief, creative brief, or background document — and let the platform draft the objective for you. You can still type your objective manually; the brief is a shortcut, not a requirement.
Note on the label: "Context Brief" may appear differently in your platform — the Socialtrait team may have customized it to match your organization's terminology (e.g. "Creative Brief", "Study Brief", or "Background Document").
Supported file types
PDF — text-based PDFs only
DOCX — Microsoft Word documents
Text-based documents work best. If a PDF is primarily images or scanned pages, the platform cannot read it, though any readable text is still extracted.
How to upload
On the Creative Ranking setup screen, click Upload a Context Brief above the Research Objective field.
Select your PDF or DOCX file.
The platform parses the document and suggests a Research Objective from the extracted content.
Review and edit the suggested objective using the guidance below before proceeding.
The same quality standards in this article apply to a generated objective — always review it, trim restated criteria, and make sure your brand and decision context are present.
If you already have an objective written
If there is already text in the objective field when you upload a brief, you'll be asked how to handle it. A Recommended (merged) version is shown next to your Current one so you can compare before deciding:
Option | What It Does |
Merge Both | Combines your existing objective with the content extracted from the brief |
Replace | Overwrites your existing objective with the auto-generated suggestion |
Keep Current | Retains your existing objective; the brief extraction is discarded |
If you're unsure, Merge Both is a good starting point — you can edit the merged result afterward.
If your brief contains embedded assets
If the brief has assets embedded inside it (e.g. ad creatives within the PDF), you'll see a notice:
⚠️ Your context brief contains assets. They will not be automatically extracted.
The platform reads the text of your brief to draft the objective, but it does not pull embedded images out to use as the creatives being ranked. Upload the assets you want ranked separately (see below).
Adding assets and notes alongside the brief
While the objective is being generated, you can attach the creatives to be ranked and add supporting context using the controls in the objective box;
Attached assets must match the modality you selected at the start of the study (Text, Image, or Video) — Creative Ranking studies cannot mix asset types. Creative Ranking needs a minimum of 2 assets to run. The objective field also enforces a 5000-character limit, shown as a live counter.
How the brief feeds use-case selection
Your objective (or context brief) plus two of your uploaded assets are used by Find the right one to generate a use case — the criteria and weightages your assets are ranked against. A clear brief leads to a better-matched use case. See Leveraging Default Use Cases for Research for how to generate, edit, review, and save use cases.
Tips for the best results
Use text-based documents — image-only or scanned PDFs can't be read.
Attach the creatives you want ranked separately. Assets embedded inside the brief are not extracted.
Add quick context notes (campaign goals, audience nuances) to enrich the suggested objective.
Always review the suggested objective against the guidance below before proceeding.
Creative Ranking Objective Template
Rank [N creatives / description] to identify which best [intent — e.g. drives engagement / builds brand fit] among [audience if relevant]. [Campaign or placement context if not in use case.] To inform [decision].
Always include: intent statement, your brand name (if Brand Fit is a criterion), campaign or placement context, the decision it informs.
Always exclude: business background, ranking criteria (already set by use case), verbatim research questions, audience labels, win-confirmation framing.
Important — Brand Fit
If Brand Fit is a criterion in your selected use case and the creative features a third-party brand, name your own brand explicitly in the objective. Otherwise brand fit may be evaluated against the wrong brand.
Common Objective Mistakes — Annotated Example
Case 1: Overloaded Objective
The ranking criteria are already defined by the use case. Restating them in the objective is redundant. If the brand is never named, there is no anchor for brand fit evaluation.
❌ Weak: "Business Objective: We are looking to refresh our app homepage experience... RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: Rank the five homepage creatives in order of overall performance. Identify which creative best drives engagement and feels most on-brand. RESEARCH QUESTIONS: Which creative catches your eye first? Which feels most relevant to you as a shopper? Which best represents the brand?..."
✅ Effective: "Rank five Maple app homepage creatives to identify which best drives engagement among new app users. Evaluate brand fit against Maple. To inform final creative selection for the autumn app campaign."
Why Objective Quality Affects Your Report
A study run with a weak objective vs. an effective one — same sample, same study type — produces dramatically different output quality.
Weak objective → weak output: Broad, high-level wording produces a conceptual map that is hard to act on. Findings are generic and don't map to a clear decision.
Effective objective → strong output: Specific, simple language produces a structured, actionable report — including the Executive Summary Infographic — that is shareable and decision-ready.
Example:
❌ Weak: "See which ad people like more."
✅ Effective: "Rank these advertisement creatives on likelihood to click. To inform final creative selection for the campaign."