Advertising texts are often creative insofar as they frequently make use of rhetorical figures, puns, polysemy, extratextual references, etc. Consequently, when they need to be translated, one must try to reproduce the creative formulations they contain as faithfully as possible. This in order to generate in the reader, listener or viewer an effect similar to that which was originally conceived in the source language. In advertising translation, however, there are certain constraints to the translator’s creativity, associated with factors such as branding, corporate identity, competitors, layout, visuals, text length and font limitations. This paper aims to describe these constraints and to illustrate their effects on the translator’s creativity and freedom of linguistic expression both in general and on the basis of concrete examples taken from translation practice in the German-Italian language pair.