Lemonlight and AdRoll partner to bridge creative and media workflows

Lemonlight and AdRoll announced a strategic partnership on October 21, 2025, designed to connect video production with media planning and execution. The collaboration addresses what both companies characterize as a persistent industry problem: creative teams and media buyers operating in separate workflows, often resulting in mismatched assets and delayed launches.

The partnership stems from challenges both companies observed among their client bases. Brands struggle to produce sufficient platform-optimized creative while simultaneously managing the rapid expansion of Connected TV advertising. According to the announcement, CTV spending reached over $40 billion in 2025, while brands now require three to five times more creative variants than they did three years ago.

Lizzie Chapman, VP Technology Partnerships & Channels at AdRoll, stated that brands face pressure to deliver engaging content across expanding digital channels, with CTV receiving major focus. The partnership provides clients with direct access to platform-optimized video creative designed to capture attention and drive measurable results.

The integration differs from typical referral arrangements between vendors. Rather than simply directing clients between services, the partnership creates a unified workflow where advertisers receive campaign strategy, media execution, and platform-optimized creative assets through a coordinated process. Research shows 72% of marketers reuse or modify creative assets across social media and Connected TV platforms, while only 25% develop tailored creative for both channels.

Hope Horner, CEO of Lemonlight, explained that advertisers have historically managed creative production and media buying separately, creating inefficiencies. The combined offering ensures video content is both visually compelling and strategically optimized for AdRoll's media channels.

The business model targets direct-to-consumer brands, e-commerce companies, subscription services, and performance-driven marketers requiring frequent creative refreshes. These advertiser segments typically need rapid creative iteration to maintain competitive positioning, particularly when exploring new channels or scaling existing campaigns.

AdRoll brings AI-powered advertising capabilities spanning media planning, audience targeting, and cross-channel attribution. The platform serves mid-sized businesses across ecommerce, technology, financial services, and education sectors. For B2B marketing teams, AdRoll ABM extends these capabilities with account-based precision and real-time buyer intelligence. The company operates with nearly 20 years of accumulated data backing its advertising technology.

Lemonlight specializes in performance creative and AI-powered production technology. The company maintains a Los Angeles studio alongside a global network of 5,000 cinematographers. Major brands including Amazon, Tesla, The Home Depot, and Philips have utilized Lemonlight's services. Since its 2014 founding by Hope Horner, Daniel Marlow, and Chad Rogers, the company has produced more than 35,000 videos.

At the center of Lemonlight's operations sits Hero, a proprietary AI platform managing documentation from pre-production through post-production. The system compresses timelines that previously required weeks into minutes for certain processes. Hero fuses human creativity with AI capabilities, enabling custom video strategies for different marketing funnel stages. Lemonlight launched generative AI commercial services on October 1, 2025, delivering finished commercial-quality content within days at 60% lower cost than traditional production methods.

The company has received seven Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies awards, recognition as one of Entrepreneur's 360 Most Innovative Companies, acknowledgment in Fast Company's Next Big Things in Tech, and more than 30 industry accolades worldwide.

The partnership addresses technical realities facing advertisers in 2025. Connected TV's share of media budgets is projected to double from 14% in 2023 to 28% in 2025, with 72% of marketers planning to increase programmatic advertising investment. This budget shift occurs while creative production requirements multiply across platforms.

Traditional workflows created significant friction. Creative teams would develop video assets weeks before launch, often without complete information about final placement specifications. By the time campaigns went live, assets frequently required reformatting or had become outdated. Media buyers, meanwhile, would inherit whatever creative materials became available, regardless of platform optimization.

The partnership eliminates these coordination problems by establishing a shared workflow. When advertisers work through the integrated system, creative production occurs with full awareness of media placement specifications. Platform-specific optimizations—such as CTV-optimized versus social-optimized formats—are built into the production process rather than applied retroactively.

This approach reflects broader industry movement toward integration. Recent analysis suggests fragmented workflowsbetween media and creative teams represent a critical inefficiency. EMARKETER vice president Jasmine Enberg noted that the lines between social media and CTV are blurring, with more people watching social videos and creator content on television sets. Marketers must break down silos between media and creative, thinking more holistically about video strategies.

The timing aligns with significant shifts in video advertising production methods. Research from the Interactive Advertising Bureau released July 15, 2025, revealed that 86% of buyers currently use or plan to implement generative AI for video advertisement creation. The study projected that generative AI creative will account for 40% of all advertisements by 2026.

Small and mid-tier brands demonstrate faster adoption rates compared to larger enterprises when implementing AI capabilities to produce professional-quality digital video advertisements efficiently. These companies leverage AI to avoid requiring extensive production teams or substantial budgets while still maintaining quality standards necessary for premium placements.

Connected television programmatic buying shows particular momentum, with buyers expecting 47% of CTV inventory to become biddable, representing an increase from 34% in the previous year. This shift reflects the maturing programmatic ecosystem within streaming platforms, where automated buying processes are becoming standard practice across premium video inventory.

The partnership addresses measurement challenges as well. Survey data from Gracenote released October 1, 2025, revealed that 32% of media executives consider their CTV advertising "not very effective," despite increasing investments. The effectiveness gap stems partly from strategic misalignment between campaign objectives and execution tactics.

When asked about their top CTV advertising obstacles, 27% of respondents cited lack of insight into whether advertisements reached their intended audience. Another 20% pointed to insufficient ROI visibility, while 17% mentioned lack of insight into where advertisements appear. Brand safety concerns, where advertisements appear in unsuitable contexts, troubled 14% of respondents.

The Lemonlight-AdRoll partnership's unified workflow potentially addresses several of these measurement and visibility challenges by maintaining consistent tracking from creative development through campaign execution. Rather than fragmenting data across separate creative and media vendors, the integrated approach enables more comprehensive performance analysis.

The announcement reflects broader consolidation trends within advertising technology. Platform providers increasingly integrate creative production capabilities rather than maintaining strict separation between creative services and media activation. This integration strategy reduces coordination overhead while potentially improving campaign performance through tighter alignment between creative messaging and media targeting.

Industry precedents exist for creative-media integration. The Trade Desk integrated Bunny Studio for audio ad creation on April 28, 2025, enabling advertisers to produce audio advertisements directly within its Kokai platform. That integration addressed similar pain points around production complexity, time constraints, and cost barriers limiting widespread adoption of audio advertising.

The partnership arrives as attention-based measurement gains importance for campaign optimization. Recent research from television measurement companies demonstrates significant performance differences between standard CTV advertising and enhanced creative formats. These findings underscore the importance of creative quality and platform optimization—precisely what the Lemonlight-AdRoll partnership aims to deliver through integrated workflows.

For the marketing community, this partnership represents a practical response to escalating complexity. As advertising channels proliferate and creative requirements multiply, the traditional model of managing separate vendors for production and media activation becomes increasingly untenable. The partnership suggests the industry may be moving toward more integrated operational models where boundaries between creative development and media execution become less distinct.

Timeline

• October 21, 2025: Lemonlight and AdRoll announce strategic partnership to streamline CTV and digital advertising
• October 1, 2025: Lemonlight launches Generative AI Commercials service delivering finished commercial-quality video within days at 60% lower cost
• October 1, 2025: Gracenote releases survey showing 32% of media executives find CTV advertising ineffectivedespite rising spend
• August 4, 2025: Microsoft launches Premium Streaming campaigns for Connected TV advertising
• July 30, 2025: Criteo and WPP Media launch commerce-driven CTV activation addressing measurement challenges
• July 15, 2025: IAB releases research showing 86% of buyers will use AI for video ad creation by 2026
• July 10, 2025: Research reveals 72% of marketers reuse creative across social and CTV platforms while only 25% develop tailored content
• April 28, 2025: The Trade Desk integrates Bunny Studio for audio ad creation within Kokai platform
• 2014: Lemonlight founded by Hope Horner, Daniel Marlow, and Chad Rogers

Summary

Who: Lemonlight, a video production company with 5,000+ cinematographers, and AdRoll, an AI-powered connected advertising platform serving growth-minded marketers, announced the partnership. Key executives include Hope Horner (Lemonlight CEO) and Lizzie Chapman (AdRoll VP Technology Partnerships & Channels).

What: A strategic partnership creating unified workflows between video creative production and media campaign execution, specifically targeting Connected TV and digital advertising. The collaboration goes beyond typical referral arrangements by integrating campaign strategy, media execution, and platform-optimized creative assets into a coordinated process.

When: The partnership was announced on October 21, 2025, following months of both companies observing client struggles with fragmented creative and media workflows. The timing coincides with CTV spending reaching over $40 billion in 2025.

Where: The partnership operates across AdRoll's media channels and Lemonlight's production infrastructure, which includes a Los Angeles flagship studio and a global network spanning multiple markets. The collaboration particularly focuses on Connected TV placements alongside digital advertising channels.

Why: The partnership addresses industry-wide fragmentation between creative teams and media buyers, which costs brands weeks of time and millions in wasted spend. With brands requiring three to five times more creative variants than three years ago and CTV budgets projected to double from 14% to 28% of media spending between 2023 and 2025, the traditional model of separate creative and media operations cannot scale effectively. The integration aims to eliminate inefficiencies from managing multiple vendors and timelines while ensuring content is optimized for specific platform requirements.