For years, performance marketing has focused on audiences, bids, and budgets, while the creative itself was treated as static. But in a world of walled gardens, rising costs, and fragmented attention, creative is now the key optimization layer, and AI is changing how we manage it.
In my conversation with Marco Matos, co-founder of Adora and veteran of Microsoft, Google/YouTube, Meta, and Pinterest, we unpacked how AI is reshaping creative strategy across platforms.
One Brand, Many Channels – All Behaving Differently
The way people consume content on Pinterest is not how they consume content on Meta, Snap, or CTV. Yet many brands still push the same five ads everywhere and hope the platforms sort it out.
Adora takes a different approach: it builds a brand-specific AI model grounded in first-party data, product catalog, and historical performance. That model doesn’t just spin up new assets; it also evaluates them, learning:
- Which creatives work for upper vs. lower funnel
- What performs best by platform and audience
- When an asset is hitting fatigue and needs a refresh
Instead of set-it-and-forget-it campaigns, AI enables a continuous loop:
Data → Creative → Performance → Back to Data.
From Tribal Knowledge to AI Memory
Marco introduced a powerful concept: AI memory. Today, a lot of hard-won learning lives in decks, spreadsheets, and people’s heads. When they leave, much of that knowledge walks out the door.
With an AI-driven system, every test, every win, and every failure becomes part of a persistent, searchable memory that new team members can access on day one. That’s where AI stops being a bolt-on tool and becomes core infrastructure for both brands and agencies.
As media gets more expensive and competition intensifies, the next real edge won’t just be better targeting; it will be AI-powered creative optimization tailored to each channel, at the speed of culture.
Discussion Points
- How AI models built on brand-specific data differ from generic creative optimization tools
- Why using the same assets across Pinterest, Meta, Snap, CTV, and other channels leaves performance on the table
- The role of creative in determining whether you can economically afford key auctions
- How to spot and manage creative fatigue on a platform-by-platform basis
- The concept of AI memory vs. traditional tribal knowledge in marketing teams
- Ways agencies and brands can share a common AI-powered infrastructure while playing different roles
- How a continuous Data → Creative → Performance → Data loop changes campaign planning and reporting
- What “moving at the speed of culture” really means for creative refresh cycles and experimentation