Eric Cook - WSI Digital & The LinkedBanker
Discover top fintech news and events!
Subscribe to FinTech Weekly's newsletter
Read by executives at JP Morgan, Coinbase, Blackrock, Klarna and more
Digital advertising is central to fintech growth — but most brands still miss the mark. It's not just about reach or retargeting anymore. Between tighter privacy expectations, shifting platform behaviors, and emerging AI agents in the mix, simply getting noticed is no longer enough.
More than ever, successful fintech marketers are focused on relevance, authenticity, and actual value. Ad budgets aren’t shrinking, but expectations around performance are changing — especially when it comes to trust. Financial services can’t afford to be gimmicky, and ad fatigue is real.
In this interview, Eric Cook shares grounded, experience-backed insight on what works today: from building genuine trust through content-first campaigns to making small but intentional creative shifts that keep messaging sharp and conversion-focused. He also addresses the growing impact of AI in digital discovery — and why personalization and strong fundamentals still matter more than new tools alone.
Enjoy the full interview.
1. The fintech market is highly competitive, with many brands offering similar value propositions. From your experience, what strategies have you found most effective in differentiating a brand in this overcrowded space?
Eric: Certainly saying that your platform is “AI” enabled is no longer going to get you noticed and differentiate you from the competition. The reality is that technology and AI has started to level the playing field and the smart fintechs that want to stand out focus on solving a real business problem for their customers. Explain the issue, your approach, and hopefully you can include testimonials or examples of how your solution solves the problem that your customers have.
I think it’s also beneficial for influential members of the company to be present at events, and in social conversations - but not to “sell their stuff” but to ask, listen, and learn in a way that builds trust with your desired target audience.
2. Trust is a critical component of financial services, yet digital ads often face skepticism. How do you approach building and maintaining trust with audiences through digital advertising?
Eric: Not over-hyping features that make it feel like you’re selling something that sounds too good to be true. Advertising does not always need to be focused on the “sale” and can be used to build awareness for educational events (like webinars) or promote content that helps to address issues and solve problems (such as whitepapers or eBooks about the problem that your customers have - which you want to show expertise around as a solutions provider).
Being genuine in your copy and ad design can go a long way. You may also want to think about the “advertorial” approach, where you provide helpful (and valuable) content that looks similar to editorial content, yet has a promotional placement and perspective associated with it.
3. Ad fatigue is a growing concern as consumers are exposed to countless ads daily. What tactics do you use to ensure that your ads stand out and remain relevant to your target audience?
Eric: We keep a close on on click-through rates for display and video ads, and when we start seeing these decline, we have a good sense of ad fatigue setting in. Have variations of the ad at the ready to swap out and consider (assuming that you have sufficient budget and views) to A/B test.
You can also use AI to give you candid feedback on your ad design by asking tools like ChatGPT or Claude to review images that you load into the LLM to see how they will resonate with your desired target audience and what action (if any) they will elicit. This honest and unbiased “AI feedback” can be a good barometer check to see if you’re on the right track and avoid human bias.
4. In your opinion, what role does "ad blindness" play in diminishing the effectiveness of digital advertising, and what strategies have you used to overcome this challenge?
Eric: Don’t be afraid to do something out of the ordinary, especially when you compare yourself to the competition. I think of Ryan Reynolds and his Mint Mobile commercials as a prime example of standing out and doing something way different from what the “biggies” of Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile were doing.
Fun, conversational, and somewhat unscripted conversations were a breath of fresh air (and of course, Ryan could pull that off). But don’t be afraid to step outside of your comfort zone and if you have the ability to A/B test, that will help you determine if you’re on the right track.
5. How do you tailor digital advertising strategies to effectively engage different generations, particularly Millennials and Gen Z, who have distinct digital behaviors and expectations?
Eric: I think a lot of this focuses on the platform(s) that you’re using and whether or not that’s where your target audience is spending their time. The ad copy ad imagery can also change based on your target audience so that when they see it, it has a greater chance of speaking to them and feeling like you “get” them.
This is where spending time thinking about each of these market personas can be helpful to determine what messaging and key benefits of your solution will solve for their particular needs.
6. With the rise of AI-powered agents playing a role in content discovery and decision-making, how should fintech advertisers adapt their strategies to create ads that appeal not only to humans but also to AI agents? What impact do you think this shift will have on the industry?
Eric: Honestly, I’m a bit skeptical on this one, yet still remain a fan of AI. I think as it relates to agents, the successful ones are going to be those that act on behalf of their human “creator” and on the lookout for what the person who built the agent wants.
Therefore, taking the time to really know what the human wants will be even more critical to becoming attractive to an agent that is acting on behalf of someone to scour the web looking for products and services.
Bringing these agents back to a resource with a healthy amount of information (likely more than what a human would read) may be one way to also entice the agent to learn more about your service, allowing it to consume massive detail and summarize for its creator as a viable option or consideration.
7. What advice would you give to fintech brands looking to break through the digital clutter and create memorable, impactful advertising?
Eric: It’s been said by many ad experts over time, but the essence of “sell the sizzle, not the steak” comes to mind here. Think about the experience, feeling, and emotion that you want to elicit as a benefit or result of your service - and get the audience to put themselves in that position even before they buy from you.
Consider what the ultimate end-state is for your customer to make their lives easier, more profitable, innovative, etc., and get your advertising and story to support that end goal.
8. Are there any emerging trends or technologies in digital advertising that you believe fintech and banking brands should be leveraging to stay competitive?
Eric: Making sure that you understand where your audience is is key in all of this. While connected devices and “free TV” is starting to become popular for some retail brands to reach people in the home, your fintech audience may not be engaged there - so despite how “cool” it is, it may not work.
When utilizing advertising and getting them to your landing page/site, consider things like interactive quizzes or calculators (to build engagement) or support landing page traffic with conversion-focused and optimized bots to be present when someone is there and help them along in the buying process, answer questions, etc.
Personalization at any stage in the process is also desirable so that when I’m on your site, if I’ve engaged with you before, you can use that information to make any follow-up efforts more comfortable and efficient for me (without overly abusing my information or “creeping” me out for fear of you knowing too much about me).
