Partner Spotlight: Ben Salaman, Senior Strategist at PB& |   17 Jun, 2025

1. Tell us about your agency. What makes you stand out?

PB& is a small, independent agency that was founded by people who have spent a lot of their careers in larger agencies. We saw that creativity and efficiency often tend to suffer due to silos, so our founder decided to launch an agency built on a leaner model that would be led by “Thinkers” and “Makers.”

We have a deep bench of senior creatives who can tailor creatives to client and campaign needs. The same core team is on every client call, so we can stay aligned from start to finish, and our clients know what to expect. This allows us to work swiftly and keep things simple and straightforward for our clients. Our team lives and breathes by the ethos that simplicity is the ultimate form of sophistication.

2. What made you choose Silverpush as a contextual partner?

We got introduced to Silverpush, because YouTube is a tough nut to crack. When you traditionally target just by something like interests and demographics, you’re not reaching all the potential audiences who are most likely to be engaged. Considering the amount of content on the platform – low quality, independent, high quality, Shorts, long form, etc – we knew we needed a contextual solution to more precisely target YouTube videos. Silverpush helps us strategically connect with the best audiences in the right moments and gives us more confidence in the video content that we’re targeting and running creative in.

3. Has the market changed recently? What are the biggest trends that you’ve seen with clients recently?

It’s a tighter economy. Clients want to get to the bottom of the funnel quickly.

This is a continuous conversation in the industry now: brand building versus driving performance. But the conversation should always be about brand and performance. You’re not usually going to ask someone to marry you after the first date. That’s why brand building is still important, and building greater brand equity around fandom and community is crucial. The need for this has become even more pronounced, especially since our attention spans have become so fragmented. You still need affinity and emotional connection to resonate, get people to lean in further, and ultimately drive conversions.

Today at PB&, we often think about media mix not as a linear funnel, but as an always-on flywheel and how an ongoing content stream will continue delivering value over time. That’s what builds momentum for the brand and eventually drives more sales and loyalty overall.

4. What are some stand-out campaigns that you’ve run this year? What made them work? (*no need to name clients – more interested in tactics)

One in particular jumps to mind. The Seattle Kraken came to us after they got a less-than-ideal opener slot. When you’re kicking off a season, you generally want to be in a primetime slot. But, the Kraken got 1:30 pm on a Tuesday. So the team knew they needed to build hype to get people to watch the game and pack the arena.

In a market like Seattle, fans are scattered around the city with a tough commute. So the afternoon on a weekday isn’t ideal, especially for a home opener. Kids are in school, and parents are at work. We knew we had to add emotional weight to the game beyond just opening day, so we came up with the creative platform, “ Hooky for Hockey.” We ran media across channels owned and operated by Kraken, local news, social media, and more.

We saw the results on opening day: the arena was sold out, and fans came with signs proudly showing they were playing “Hooky for Hockey.” There was even ESPN coverage, where they mentioned Hooky For Hockey during the live broadcast. Making that campaign become part of the conversation in the hockey world was a big win for the Kraken and really set the tone for the season.

With Silverpush, we’ve focused on driving engagement from viewers for matches throughout the season. We know sports viewing behaviors have changed. Especially with younger demos consuming YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels, it’s all about the highlights. By using Silverpush Mirrors, we can deliver our ads to specific hockey highlights with messaging that encourages people to tune in live, with campaigns like, “Why watch the highlights when you can see it live?”

5. Have you noticed the impact of AI over the past year? Where have you seen it being used the most?

I think a tidal wave is incoming and people are in for a rude awakening in our industry, not just creative, but across the board. We’re seeing it used in many pockets all around the industry, especially with D2C brands that are relying on AI for high-volume “churn and burn” creative. For mid and lower-funnel tactics, it can be a great tool to optimize targeting and bidding to drive a greater ROI against KPIs. You can churn out a lot of different creatives in tandem to rapidly test, learn, and refine at scale.

You aren’t necessarily beholden to a designer for minor tweaks or improvements. The science of what we do isn’t as bogged down by the time going into the art. But I think this is a crucial topic people get caught up in. There’s clear value to both, and I’m certainly not dismissing the power of creativity. In fact, it’s probably the most crucial ingredient to make this whole AI thing work the best it can… sustainably.

I think we get mistaken about ad creative and AI all the time. This isn’t nor should ever be a replacement for copywriters and art directors. Things might get more realistic as generative AI evolves and improves, but I don’t think AI will have a full understanding of the human condition, like our pain points, desires, and unspoken truths. You can populate AI with data, but you will never find me using the output it gives me for the final creative brief or creative.

Things just can’t resonate with humans if it’s a computer talking to a human or the only thing synthesizing data coming from humans. If you need high-volume (and affordable) output to fuel the engine of your experimentation after you land on a creative platform, that’s where AI can be of service. Not as a replacement. But, everyone should be comfortable with understanding prompting, how the technology works, and most importantly, how to get actionable and inspiring results to improve, not replace, creativity.

6. What are the biggest ad challenges for brands? What are the biggest opportunities?

Fragmentation – and not just in media channels. In communities and culture, IRL and online. I like to think of it as a Rubik’s cube. Add niche communities on top of media fragmentation, and all of a sudden, you have a way more complicated Rubik’s cube, and it’s a tougher puzzle to crack. Finding that perfect audience is like a needle in a haystack, where that haystack isn’t just on one plane or channel – but multiple.

We’ve seen the biggest opportunity is to really focus on building fandom in niche communities by not only showing up in the right environments but also in the right moments to deliver something that is human-first and empathy-first.

7. What is your advertising hot take?

The future is all about the time people spend with you, not the number of eyeballs you get. That’s why relevance is critical and why brands need to show up when and where it matters, but I think as technology advances…, we’re needing to go further and focus conversations around how we can be respectfully relevant. There really is a thing as being too invasive or too creepy when it comes to advertising. That’s when AI’s role in advertising can actually backfire in many ways.

You can’t skip the emotional connection just because you have the tools to get in front of someone right away in an environment you know will convert. Even with millions of targeting inputs and automated optimization, creative will always be the ultimate form of targeting. It’s the glue that melds these points of connection – media is just our vehicle to get it there. That’s why media strategy and creative should always be in lockstep every step of the way in today’s landscape.