Is AI Replacing Creative Strategists? (Ray Jang Explains What’s Next)

In this episode of Inside Marketing with MarketSurge, Reed Hansen sits down with Ray Jang, Founder & CEO of Atria — the world’s first AI creative strategist platform.

AI isn’t coming for marketing.

It’s already in the brainstorm.

Ray is building something radically different: an AI system designed not just to generate content, but to think strategically about it. Atria analyzes Meta, TikTok, and YouTube ad performance, processes billions in ad spend data, and provides real-time creative strategy recommendations through its AI agent, Raya.

The big question:

Is AI replacing creative strategy — or redefining it?

If you’re a founder, CMO, creative director, performance marketer, or trying to survive the AI wave, this episode is required listening.

💡 What You’ll Learn:

• Why AI is shifting marketers from dashboard managers to strategic thinkers
 • How Atria processes $5.3B+ in ad spend to predict winning creative
 • Why originality now matters more than ever in paid media
 • How AI evaluates hooks, CTAs, and video performance frame-by-frame
 • Why the best brands operate with scientific rigor + artistic intuition
 • Whether AI will replace creative teams (or amplify them)
 • What marketing looks like in the next 3–5 years

🔥 Key Highlights:

✅ AI as a Co-Strategist – Moving beyond content generation into strategic recommendation
 ✅ Radar Scoring System – Grading hooks and creative elements A–D based on performance likelihood
 ✅ Agentic Marketing – Replacing dashboard fatigue with AI-driven insight
 ✅ Creative Velocity – Why winning ads fatigue faster in today’s algorithm-driven ecosystem
 ✅ The Median Problem – Why AI tends to return average ideas — and how top marketers stay ahead

🧠 Ray’s Perspective on the Future

AI doesn’t eliminate creativity.

It eliminates busywork.

The best marketers won’t be replaced — they’ll be amplified.

But only if they evolve.

As Ray references from The Matrix:

“Do not try to bend the spoon. That’s impossible. Instead, realize the truth — there is no spoon.”

Marketing is entering a world where perception and reality are merging — and AI is accelerating that shift.

🌐 Connect with Ray Jang & Atria:

👉 Atria Website: https://tryatria.com
👉 Connect with Ray on LinkedIn (Ray Jang)

Atria has processed over $5.3B in ad spend and is building the future of AI-powered creative strategy.

📈 At MarketSurge, we help you turn tools into systems — and systems into growth.

If you want automation that feels personal and performs like a team of 10, you’re in the right place.

🧠 Want to talk strategy or see how AI integrates into your marketing stack?

🎯 Book your 15-minute Value or Free Coffee Call:
 https://link.marketsurge.io/widget/bookings/15minutevalueorfreecoffee

🔗 Useful Links

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📊 CRM Platform: https://marketsurge.io/crm
📲 Texting & Automation: https://marketsurge.io/texting
📘 Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100035121171654
💼 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsurgeio
🐦 X / Twitter: https://x.com/marketsurging
🎙️ Podcast: https://marketsurge.transistor.fm/

🎙️ About Inside Marketing with MarketSurge

Hosted by Reed Hansen, Chief Growth Officer at MarketSurge, this podcast breaks down bold business ideas, real marketing systems, and what’s actually moving the needle today.

No fluff. No guru theory. Just strategy that scales.

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Creators and Guests

Host

Reed Hansen

Reed Hansen is a seasoned digital marketing executive with a proven track record of driving business growth through innovative strategies. As the Chief Growth Officer at MarketSurge, he focuses on leveraging AI-powered marketing tools to help businesses scale efficiently. Reed's expertise spans from leading startups to Fortune 500 companies, making him a recognized authority in the digital marketing space. His unique ability to combine data-driven insights with creative solutions has been instrumental in achieving remarkable sales growth for his clients. ​

What is Inside Marketing with MarketSurge?

Welcome to Inside Marketing with MarketSurge — your front-row seat to the boldest business insights, marketing breakthroughs, and entrepreneurial real talk.

Hosted by Reed Hansen, Chief Growth Officer at MarketSurge and a digital marketing veteran who's helped scale everything from scrappy startups to Fortune 500 giants, this podcast dives deep into what’s really moving the needle in today’s marketing world. Find us at Marketsurge.io

Each week, we’ll break down the latest marketing and business news (minus the fluff), explore tech trends you actually need to know, and feature unfiltered conversations with the most interesting minds in entrepreneurship and marketing.

Whether you're a founder, a marketer, or just a curious hustler looking to level up, this is where growth happens—loudly, smartly, and with just the right amount of sass.

Subscribe, tune in, and let’s scale something legendary. 🚀

Speaker 3: Welcome to Inside
Marketing With Market Surge.

Your front row seat to the
boldest ideas and smartest

strategies in the marketing game.

Your host is Reed Hansen, chief
Growth Officer at Market Surge.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: AI
isn't coming from marketing.

It's already in the brainstorm.

But here's the real question,
is AI replacing creative

strategy or redefining it?

Today on Inside Marketing with Market
Surge, I'm joined by Ray Jang, the

founder and CEO of Atria, the world's
first AI creative strategist platform.

Ray is building something wild,
an AI system designed not just

to generate content, but to
think strategically about it.

With experience at TikTok and deep
expertise in AI and machine learning for

marketing, Ray sits at the intersection of
data, creativity and what's coming next.

We're diving into what AI actually
means for creative teams, whether human

creatives are evolving or becoming
obsolete, and what the next three to

five years of marketing look like.

If AI becomes your co strategist,
if you're a founder, CMO, creative

director, or just trying to survive
the AI wave, this episode is for you.

Let's get into it.

Ray, welcome to the show.

I'm glad to have you.

For people who haven't heard of Atria,
what exactly is an AI creative strategist

and, and maybe give us a little background
behind the, the product in the company.

Ray: Yeah, a hundred percent.

So Atria is an end-to-end AI creative
strategist, and what that means is we

analyze all your meta TikTok, YouTube ads.

Understand where to make strategic
bets based on everything that we're

seeing internally and the way the
algorithms reward strategic bets.

And then we help to
launch those ads for you.

In terms of images first and
then video later in the year.

ATRI was founded after I left TikTok.

At TikTok.

I got used to winning and I thought,
oh, it must be pretty easy to

launch and run a successful company.

Always much.

Easier said than done when
looking from the outside in.

Once I left, I worked on my first
company which kind of went nowhere for

about two, two and a half years, and we
couldn't figure out our growth problems.

So with three months of runway we
decided to do a Hail Mary being

like, Hey, let's actually try
and solve this growth problem.

For ourselves.

And, you know, by virtue of doing
it help others along the way.

And it turned out a lot of people truly
struggle with launching winning ads.

I think fundamentally what has
shifted is for every dollar you put

in, you could, you know, usually
get $3 back in the earlier days.

These days.

If you have a winning formula,
it gets fatigued very quickly.

And it, it goes both ways.

You know, it's been easier for advertisers
to launch ads more iteratively with

the leverage of ai, but even more
so what the algorithm has done to

counteract that is to ensure that
they reward more original content.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Hmm.

Ray: And then they also ensure that
the shelf life of each content doesn't

run as long, so that it, it, the,
the algorithm cycles through only

the best and highest quality content.

So that's why a tool or a platform
more so like atria is needed because it

genuinely requires a lot more velocity.

And then more so within that
velocity, a lot more distinct and

diverse ads to truly perform in these
meta TikTok and YouTube platforms.

I.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: so from your
experience at TikTok, what did you

see about, so I, you know, I think
you highlighted a couple things.

You know, originality is really
featured and preferred and novelty.

Are there any other insights
you have from your time at,

TikTok that maybe brands don't?

Don't really understand the same way.

Like know, were there ways that,
were there decisions being made

at TikTok deliberate to favor
certain creatives over others?

Besides that,

Ray: Sorry, the question is like
what were brands not doing or.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: well, what
do they maybe not realize that they

wouldn't have from not having worked
on the platform side, you know.

Ray: Yeah, so I think fundamentally
what I've observed is TikTok was

really, really good at educating
their customers and really giving

them the playbook to succeed.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

Ray: to, and they really invested in
these partnerships, and that's why TikTok

became the number one social platform
just by their partnership by among several

things, one of which is like creating a
very good partnership ecosystem that said.

It was really interesting to often
see that even when the playbook was

provided people, everyone was looking
for the 80 20, the shortcuts the, you

know, how do I just keep whatever I have
without having to invest more, right?

And so now that I'm on the
other side and I'm looking at

how, you know, how the top 0.1%

brands they differentiate
themselves from the rest of the

market is a relentless investment.

Into trying new things holding every idea
as an, an idea that can die tomorrow.

And then rigorously testing for both.

What would appeal to
existing and new audiences?

Right.

So there's always, so I, I find
that the best brands almost.

Aim to perform on a kind of
scientific level of rigor in terms

of understanding their data, but
they also bring this kind of like.

Net new white space, artistic kind
of approach to like their ideas.

And that is really, really
difficult to pull, to pull off.

'cause if you tend to have a very
data driven team, everything gets

analyzed, you know, under a microscope.

Right.

And everything is really table
rise to be like, okay, you know,

if, if a, led to B then, you know,
we need to do more of a right.

And then, you know, the artistic team,
they tend to be more touchy feely.

They might be very good at brand
stuff, but then when it comes to

analyzing the data, they don't
even know what the learnings are.

And so because of these two kind
of gaps that don't often overlap

in many the rest of that 99.9%

of the market, that's
who we're also enabling.

While the 0.1%

are actually growing even faster as a
result of Adria 'cause they're like,

wow, we're even more, we're able to
compound our learnings even more because

we're already doing this really well.

We're also able to democratize
some of that DNA to teams

that don't have both sides.

So for example, what Raya is,
our creative strategy agent is

essentially processes all of your data.

And it's giving in real time
recommendations on what is

most likely going to lift
performance in terms of your ads.

So that's the more like
rigorous scientific approach.

And the, we, the reason why we're
able to do this read is because

we've processed more than 5.3

billion.

And ad spend, right?

Specifically on meta.

So this gives us the informational
understanding and access to understand

what's more likely to perform.

And then on the flip side, in terms
of the more spontaneous, artistic more

original white space standpoint, ai.

Ai, is less biased, right.

Is, does not hold dear to, you know, they
have less emotional attachment to their

ideas, which often, you know, is our
strength and our weaknesses as humans.

And so, you know, with these two combined,
well we're essentially creating is more

an engineered approach to marketing.

And this is what is being required by the
market because, you know, fundamentally

each unit on an ad is so competitive
that only the very best to survive.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay, so to
what extent are you, you know, analyzing

creative has always been tricky, you
know, because there's so much art to

it and so much subtlety and nuance,
like to what degree Are your agents and

atria analyzing the actual creative ads?

Like, are they

Ray: Yeah.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: the skin
color, the facial expression, the

Like how, how deep does it go?

Ray: Yeah, so we look at
it from two components.

There is the components of what make
an image or video ad and what generally

is per so for example, in a video ad.

The hook, right, the first three second
in a video or the call to action.

You know, these elements are viewed
in terms of both the hook, the each

el, each of these elements itself,
while also looking at the data that

corresponds with the performance.

Yeah, so this is one aspect
that we're looking at it.

The other that is really the, you know,
what has been amazing is that the cost

for computer vision has significantly gone
down, such that we can analyze not only

images, but videos frame by frame, right?

Because video is essentially hundreds
of thousands of frames composed into.

Right.

And so what our AI is doing in real time
is that it will process each of these

ads, look at the components of what
will most likely score it to perform.

Great.

So we have this algorithm called Radar,
and it will, it's like getting homework,

like, you know, from a score A to D.

And if your hook is a D then we'll give
you specific recommendations on how to

make that a better hook based on all the
different hooks that we've seen inside

our system that have received an A.

And we will also go in a layer deeper.

So that it's a more bottom up approach
to say, Hey, these are the specific

things we're picking up based on the
way the persona or the transcript or

the background is coming up, right?

So this used to be hours and
hours of ends of work, right?

For one creative strategist to do.

But now our real goal is to provide
a very, very helpful teammate.

To each of these creative strategists
so that their units of time

is extremely leveraged, right?

So it's not that we're here to
replace creative strategists,

it's more how do you, how do we.

Ensure that better and smarter decisions
are made by creative strategist and most

of the manual operation works kind of
get compressed through the agent doing

that on behalf of the the customer.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Now to what degree?

So, you know, I, I'm a AI user.

I use it for a lot of things
marketing related and, and I have

a few custom gpt for different
contexts or different situations.

In some cases, I'll make a custom GPT for.

A specific client that we're
doing a lot of deep work with.

Now, to what extent are, is your
platform learning from the client

or learning from the project?

You know, is that, or do you avoid that
because you're pulling from the billions

of dollars spent and the experience and
trying to bring people to best practices?

You know, what, where,
where's the balance there?

Ray: Yeah, so we deeply care about what
queries and the quality of answer that we

provide for set queries for our customers.

So meaning the, our Learning Loop
really focuses on, Hey, what is it

truly that the customers consistently
on a high frequency basis care about?

So that we can get closer and closer to
actually delivering the right response.

Right?

So that's, from that standpoint, we care a
lot about what the customers are inquiring

and, you know receiving answers on.

I, I would say the hard part is genuinely
understanding how satisfied they.

Right.

You know, I think the, the
shortcuts to this is like the

thumbs up, thumbs down, or,

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Ray: you know, or, or like ambiently
to be able to observe how often they

return back to ask more queries.

But, you know, this is
the hard part, right?

Where we, we need to you know,
do a, a, a combination of

qualitative and quantitative.

Understanding to see if
our agent is improving.

However, you know, like I, I think
what we're seeing is that most

marketers, if not all, really do prefer
an agentic experience to learning

about how their ads are performing

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Mm-hmm.

Ray: than a dashboard
oriented way of doing it.

Let me just be very, very clear here.

No one went into marketing because
they believed marketing was going

to be looking at dashboards all day.

However, unfortunately for our generation,
there is this period time lost where

marketing used to be, Hey, creative
ideas, strategic bets, you know, thinking

outside the box go, being ahead of
the curve to being drowning in data.

To be able to justify marketing costs
via spreadsheet that then got into

ified, then that, then, then got,
you know ai, AI applied, whatever.

And then now you're sitting here
like trying to be a dashboard expert.

Go long gone, will
those days be very soon.

And that is my focus and mission is
to, to empower the marketers to really

focus on asking great questions.

Observing interesting organic trends,
and then to be able to put those into

action as soon as possible such that
the AI or the agents, in our case,

Raya, is doing the data processing,
understanding the hidden patterns that

can be transfused into learnings, right?

That is really what we want.

And so, you know, if, if, if I almost
put it in that way, Reid, you know,

which marketer would say no to that?

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: No
marketer would say no to that.

so Reid, let me ask you, as you know, you
have a very powerful platform and I mean,

I love what you're doing and, and, So,
you know, along with the AI models and,

and other autonomous tools, it does feel
like you described this age agentic model.

it, it frees up the marketer to be a
creative, almost like a high level thinker

and delegator rather than heavily in
the spreadsheets and the numbers Now.

this continues to evolve your product and
others are, do you think creativity itself

is replaced, is that function replaced?

You know, is it eventually gonna
evolve to like, what does it look

like in a couple years, five years?

Ray: I find that LLM so far are
very, very good at returning

the median, the median result.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Okay.

Ray: So the true, truly world
class marketers are gonna be.

Amplifying their ahead of the curve.

Ideas that have not been
already reprocessed by LLMs.

Just to be very clear, there's
no truly original idea.

Everything is a remix of a remix.

Of a remix.

How that said what I'm finding, for
example, I'll give you a very clear

example of this, and then we can sort
of stretch this to a couple years out.

When.

Our, it, it like all these like
video and generative ai came out.

What we really saw was an onslaught of
the like a lot of people in the market

started just creating direct replicas
of whatever ads they were trying to do,

but in a faster way cheaper, faster.

Then at times slightly better, but
mostly not is what we saw with most

marketing use, use usage of it.

The top 0.1%

thought about the generative AI
use case very differently, where

they were more like, actually, this
seems truly pattern disrupting.

This seems like an opportunity.

Where, for example, in a podcast setting,
we can have two dogs talk to each other in

real time, almost acting very seriously.

Everyone knows it's ai.

Everyone thinks it's goofy.

Everyone is kind of like in their, you
know, minds in their limbic system going,

oh, this, there's something off here, but
this something I want to keep looking at.

Right.

And that's something that, you know, AI.

Is more like not gonna be able
to give you off the cuff you

know ideas a as well, right?

Unless you were already the marketer
that's were wa was connecting the dots,

discovering ways to pattern match.

And the moment that dog in the,
in the podcast studio format gets

replicated ad nauseum, the, the,
the person with the creativity

have has already gone a step ahead.

Right?

So that said, will we come to a point
where AI will recursively get better at.

Being creative such that it outperforms
most quote unquote creative ideas?

I think so, right?

Like I think that that's already happening
to, to, to, to, to, to some degree in

less, in less visually oriented formats.

Like writing these days is starting
to, you know, I think a lot of writers

are starting to get astounded by
the quality of writing that, you

know Claude is able to produce.

Compared to 18 months ago,
where it was clearly right.

So AI generated.

So I think there will
always be pockets where.

Us as human with our authentic
approaches and our kind of less

put together like desire, right?

To, to put mash things up.

I think those will, there will always
be some pocket, some pockets of that,

because again, AI has a tendency to,
you know, return what the median.

Of the curve, you know, is
like is, you know, embedding.

And then but you know, maybe, maybe
over time there will be micro models

that can also get a little bit
less, less less agreeable, right.

Less median.

So, we'll see.

I think, I think it's
really hard to predict.

You know, I, I think like, I,
I, I, I often tell myself as a

founder, I wake up every day first.

Telling myself I don't know anything.

And then secondly, I'm not convinced
of anything anymore because the

world is so uncertain and like with
the rate at which AI is progressing,

it's so non-linear that, you know, as
our human minds is hard to compute.

So, you know, if, so all I can say is
everything that I've shared with you

may be valid today, but I cannot pretend
to understand what's around the curve.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Yeah.

Well, Ray, as you're talking, I
feel like I am in the original

Matrix movie and I'm listening to
Morpheus describe this new world.

You know, can't help but think that
you're about to unleash an army

of Neos in the world that have.

know, more power, more ability
to disrupt, you know, with the,

with a full understanding of
what, what's in front of them.

So, you know, I, I love this.

I think you do a great
job explaining this.

I mean, your tool looks awesome.

tell us now if people would like
to work with you, work with Atria,

you know, where, where are the best
places they can find more information?

Ray: By the way, I love the Matrix movie.

I love that reference.

It perhaps is the only movie I've watched
like three times is just like that good.

Right?

And, and I, you know.

I'm not the type of, you know,
there, there, I've, I have friends

who love repeatedly watching
movies, but I usually once and done.

But the Matrix is truly an exception.

But like, I do love
the line that they say.

It's like, do not try to bend the spoon.

That's impossible.

Instead, realize the truth.

There is no spoon, right?

There is no spoon.

So I feel like, yeah, I'll leave
the audience with that note.

Because more and more the distance
between perception and reality.

Is getting more and more blurred.

And, and, and you can almost
say perception is reality.

So like, it's, it's a really brave
new world that we're entering into.

For, for audiences that want to learn
more about Atria, it's try atria.com,

T-R-Y-A-T-R-I a.com.

A brief process more than $5.3

billion in ad spend.

Our goal is to help you do the
work that you were meant to do.

Right?

and then help eliminate the work that
you were never meant to be doing.

Right?

So more creative, more thinking,
more, you know off the cuff

kind of, you know fun, right?

I ideas less.

Processing data, looking at dashboards,
coordinating with different stakeholders.

And yeah, our launch of Raya,
our AI agents is out now.

So, and that's only gonna
get better and better.

So really.

It was fun chatting with you.

And then of course, if you wanna
follow me, I'm Ray Jang at on LinkedIn

where occasionally I share interesting
ideas, but most of the time I'm just,

you know, just chasing my curiosity.

Reed Hansen, MarketSurge: Well, I love it.

Right.

Thank you so much for coming on.

This was super valuable.

I know we have a short podcast
and so we only like dipped

our toe in, in these waters.

But I really appreciate you coming
on and would point anybody looking to

really free up their creative high level.

to work with you at Atria.

So thanks so much, Ray.

Speaker 4: Want to stay ahead of what's
actually working in marketing right now.

Head over to Market surge.io

and see how we're helping businesses
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That's market surge.io

because your next breakthrough
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