Press Release: Silverback Strategies CRO Allyson Cochran Featured on Markigy Podcast, Outlining How to Activate AI Ad Algorithms Through a “Creative System”

Cochran explains why “creative is the new targeting” in the era of automated ad platforms—and highlights how structured audience research and rapid creative refreshes prevent wasted spend.

Leesburg, Virginia (August 7, 2026) – Allyson Cochran, Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) of Silverback Strategies, recently appeared as a guest on the Markigy podcast hosted by Leanne Dow-Weimer. In the episode, Cochran broke down the fundamental shift in modern performance marketing, highlighting why creative has emerged as the ultimate targeting lever and how companies must evolve to survive and thrive under today’s AI-driven ad engines.

Cochran explained how a major measurement and targeting crisis precipitated this shift. Major data privacy regulations, including GDPR, have severed the flow of browsing and app data into advertising platforms like Meta, completely obliterating traditional audience segmentation and targeting techniques. In response, ad platforms have automated their delivery systems—such as Meta’s Andromeda algorithm, introduced in late 2024—which rely on predictive models to match ads to users based on behavior.

According to Cochran, without a robust creative strategy to guide these predictive algorithms, the AI cannot identify who to serve ads to, causing campaigns to stall, delivery issues, and marketing dollars to go to waste.

“A lot of companies are approaching creative from a company-first perspective without the perspective of the customer, and they are completely missing the point. In this AI era, you have to build creative that speaks to the specific intrinsic motivators of your target audiences. Creative is your biggest lever for ensuring you are engaging the right customers rather than just driving cheap, low-quality bot conversions.” — Allyson Cochran, Chief Revenue Officer, Silverback Strategies

Rather than simply scaling up ad volume with generic or poorly executed AI-generated “noise,” Cochran championed the deployment of a structured “Creative System.” This framework is rooted in rigorous audience research to uncover the psychological triggers, buying catalysts, and purchasing barriers defined by “Jobs to Be Done” theory. Once marketers understand these intrinsic motivators, they can map them onto diverse visual and messaging concepts tailored to specific micro-personas or archetypes.

Cochran also emphasized the need for a scientific testing taxonomy and backend tracking infrastructure to identify which ad elements truly perform. She illustrated how tracking specific components—such as finding that solution-oriented hooks in a user-generated content (UGC) format featuring a stressed-out mom can convert at six times the rate of glossy brand creative—replaces guesswork with empirical data.

Furthermore, because modern ad platforms consume behavioral data rapidly, ads fatigue far quicker than they did in the past, leading to spiked frequencies and stalled reach. Cochran highlighted the importance of a rapid creative refresh motion to maintain delivery, recommending that brands constantly rotate variants, adding five to ten new variations or cuts weekly depending on spend. To achieve this pace, she urged brands in highly compliant sectors, such as healthcare, finance, or higher education, to streamline their internal review processes and establish proactive, pre-approved creative batches.

Ultimately, Cochran declared that the era of the purely “technical marketer” or simple “lever puller” is coming to an end, as AI platforms automate manual campaign management.

“We are shifting back towards strategy. If you’ve let those muscles atrophy, now is the time to build them back. Future marketing leaders need to combine creative intuition with analytical rigor, focusing on how to fuel the machines with the right strategic inputs.” — Allyson Cochran, Chief Revenue Officer, Silverback Strategies

To learn more about Silverback Strategies and its performance marketing services, visit www.silverbackstrategies.com.