[otabdeveloper1]

> I can see why they would call it something other than "ads" (which obviously has negative connotations.)

No, that's wrong. "Creative" is professional jargon, it refers to the content of the ad when divorced from the medium or the delivery channel.

[hueving]

When I refer to an 'ad', I'm usually referring to the content. Whether I see it in a newspaper, on TV, or on a website, I call it an 'ad'. What are marketers referring to when they say 'ad'?

[Chris2048]

Would 'stuff' be an appropriate synonym?

[munchbunny]

To the extent that you can assign arbitrarily specific meaning to any word as long as others know to decode it, you could in theory find and replace "creative" with "stuff" in our language and records.

But otherwise "stuff" is an ambiguous term and "creative" is industry jargon.

[pbhjpbhj]

Perhaps if you're a 19th Century tailor!?