The Reason AI Ad Creative Is So Disappointing (With Alex Cooper)

Aug 15, 2025

Alex Cooper, Co-founder and CEO of AdCrate, shares his expertise on the intersection of AI and advertising. He emphasizes that while AI can amplify creativity, it can't save poorly conceived ideas. The conversation highlights the need for context-specific documents to enhance ad effectiveness and the importance of operational knowledge in scaling strategy without sacrificing quality. Alex also advocates for a structured approach to AI use in marketing, encouraging strategic experimentation and adherence to foundational marketing principles.

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INSIGHT

AI Amplifies Strategy, Not Magic

AI amplifies good ideas rather than creating them from scratch.
Feed AI strategic truth so it multiplies high-quality concepts instead of garbage.

ADVICE

Create Task-Specific Context Documents

Build task-specific context documents and plug them into custom GPT/Claude projects.
Use brand data, top performers, and creative principles to raise hit rate of generated headlines and scripts.

ADVICE

Iterate Chats, Curate Winners

Run iterative chats that narrow emotion, persona, and awareness level to surface ideas.
Collect the best outputs into a scrappy document and prune to the top 5–6 to push to production.

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BEHIND THE SCENES STUDIO

Work with the same Meta Ads creative production team that Andrew does with Behind The Scenes Studio, a More Staffing sister company: ⁠https://www.behindthescenes.studio/.

RICHPANEL

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This episode gets practical about AI and ad creative. Andrew Faris and Alex Cooper (Adcate) break down what’s actually working, why most AI ads still fall flat, and how operators can build a creative system that compounds.

What you’ll learn:

- AI as an amplifier, not a shortcut: why bad ideas stay bad, even with great models—and how to surface signal from 20+ AI-generated options instead of shipping noise.

- Context engineering OVER prompt engineering: building brand-specific context documents and custom GPT/Claude projects (brand data + top performers + task-specific creative principles) to raise hit rate across headlines, hooks, scripts, and iterations.

- Operationalized knowledge: treating your agency/org as “operationalized knowledge,” then encoding that knowledge into AI so strategy scales without diluting quality.

- Process over novelty: frameworks like AI Days and moonshot briefs to test new tools (VO3, image/video gen, research apps) without derailing production.

- Where VO3 fits now: using intentionally unrealistic visuals for hooks and pattern breaks while keeping workflows realistic for speed and cost.

- Tool overload triage: how to evaluate new AI releases against business outcomes (profit, CAC, volume, timelines) and avoid shiny-object churn.

- The strategist’s new job: knowing what to create (psychology, research, copy fundamentals) while AI accelerates execution.

Why this is worth your time

If you’re feeling margin pressure, creative fatigue, or whipsawed by weekly AI launches, this conversation gives you a repeatable way to:

- Raise creative hit rate without inflating headcount

- Protect focus while still exploring new tools

- Encode your best thinking into systems your whole team can use

Ship more diverse, on-strategy ads—faster

CHAPTER TITLES:

00:01:33 - Where Is Alex Moving???

00:02:27 - A.I. Great For Ideation, Bad For Execution

00:08:24 - Strategy For Deep Research

00:15:15 - The Agency Model In DTC

00:22:48 - How To Know What Knowledge Is Truth Using A.I.

00:35:48 - The Future Of Content Creation & Creative Output

00:41:41 - Andrew’s Bet On The Future of A.I. Technology

00:45:43 - Hot Takes With Alex

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ADMISSION

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Email: podcast@ajfgrowth.com

Work with Andrew: ⁠https://ajfgrowth.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠