Back in the early 90s when I was at McCann Erickson, TV and video were aspirational channels for most small businesses. Only brands with serious budgets could afford polished commercials. Since then, “television” has expanded to YouTube, OTT, CTV, and countless streaming environments. Production tools are cheaper, audiences accept less “slick” creative, and AI is accelerating how ads get made and deployed.
In a recent conversation, I spoke with Eric Frankel, founder and CEO of AdGreetz and a 30-year veteran of Warner Bros, about how dynamic creative optimization (DCO) and AI are reshaping advertising for both global brands and SMBs.
From Warner Bros to Fixing Broken Ad Relevance
At Warner Bros, Eric helped drive the shift from linear TV to streaming. That experience trained him to always look for what’s next. The insight that pushed him toward AdGreetz was simple: modern ads were still generic and often irrelevant, despite rich data being available.
He described buying an expensive suit at a luxury department store, only to be bombarded later with women’s clothing ads. At the same time, ads almost never told him something concretely useful, like where the nearest fast-food location was or what time a movie was playing nearby. The gap between what digital could theoretically do and what creative actually did was too big to ignore.
Building Dynamic Creative at Scale
That disconnect led Eric to launch AdGreetz. The company initially focused on large brands, replacing one-size-fits-all creative with ads tailored by gender, family status, location, weather, day of week, and even specific SKUs. Instead of talking to everyone the same way, the goal was to speak to each person about products and information that truly mattered to them.
Over time, AdGreetz generated billions of dynamic ads for hundreds of brands worldwide. But small businesses were still left out. They lacked the budgets, tools, and expertise to produce high-quality video and rich media at scale.
AI as the Great Creative Equalizer
With the rise of AI, that barrier began to fall. Today, AdGreetz lets any brand start with something as simple as a URL and quickly generate a range of creative: video spots, static and rich media units, carousels, and influencer-style ads.
Under the hood, roughly 50 AI models and dozens of versions are orchestrated by a “brain” that decides how to assemble effective creative. Large agencies can still control every frame while saving time and money. SMB-focused platforms can automate ads for thousands of small customers who would never build this stack on their own.
Fighting Ad Burnout with Fresh Creative
A persistent industry problem is ad burnout. When brands invest heavily in a single “hero” spot, they tend to run it endlessly. Viewers quickly get tired of it, and that fatigue can morph into negative sentiment toward the brand.
AI-driven DCO offers another path: produce many variations inexpensively, keep the experience fresh, and continually test what works. Rather than making a single massive bet, marketers can run ongoing experiments across audiences, formats, and messages.
Why Affordable Testing Is Now a Strategy
Eric argues that affordable testing is no longer optional. With AI driving down the cost of quality variations, the bigger risk is not experimenting enough. Brands can compare localized, highly specific creative against traditional generic ads and use real performance data (view time, click-throughs, cost per lead or test drive) to guide decisions.
For large brands and agencies, this demands a shift away from pure command-and-control creative models. For SMBs, it is an unprecedented chance to run campaigns that look like they came from a top-tier agency without paying those fees. In both cases, DCO plus AI is moving from “nice to have” to “required capability” for staying relevant.
Discussion Points Include:
- Eric Frankel’s journey from Warner Bros to founding AdGreetz
- Why generic, non-relevant ads are a missed opportunity in a digital-first world
- How AdGreetz evolved from enterprise DCO to an AI-driven creative platform
- The role of AI in democratizing video and rich media production for SMBs
- Ad burnout, frequency, and the need for fresh, diverse creative
- How dynamic creative can incorporate location, time, weather, and SKUs
- The tension between agency creative control and AI-driven flexibility
- Why affordable, continuous testing is becoming a strategic must-have for marketers