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Comment by sp332 | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, but is "creative" a noun now? In some of the article it sounds like advertising, but at the end it sounds like a product.

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Yes, it is, used to refer to advertising content.

I suppose it helps disambiguate that from the content around which ads appear. Beyond that, I suppose language is no less subject to fads and trends than any other realm of human endeavor.

Referring to ad content as creative has been around since at least the days of Madison avenue ad agencies in the 1950s. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's usage arose concurrently with advertising.

The article refers to Disney movies as "a creative".

Oh. In that case I have no idea what they're doing, unless it's just a shibboleth synonymous with "content" as it's typically used of late.

Thank you for asking. I am sure the term is as old as the industry, but in every domain I am irked by the use of adjectives, specifically, as nouns. This article is a particularly irritating example.

My earliest memory of struggling with this kind of language was in high school economics class. I was forever put off from the material by the confusing truncation of noun-phrases into adjectives.

And it's a shame, because there's a lot to discuss here: vast swathes of the technology industry hinge on the subjects discussed. Weinberg and Lombardo seem to be suggesting that an emperor has no clothes.

Mad Men used it like that all the time, so it's no longer a little-known term specific to the ad industry.

has been for decades, a kind of industry specific jargon though - can also be used to refer to people

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