What I’m seeing with AI in ad creative right now

Hey guys,

As someone who runs an AI-first creative agency putting out thousands of ads a month, this week I just want to share a few random thoughts on how we’re using AI in ad creative right now…

But first, here’s what I’ve come across in AI this week:

• Amazon just dropped their new AI Video Generator that can turn product images into multi-scene video ads

• This guy shared a post about Jaaz AI, a tool which generates professional videos and images with a single prompt 

• This founder vibe coded an app to track her friends' sex lives lol

Some observations on AI in ad creative right now

Veo hooks are crushing in multiple accounts

Similar to image gen, I've found the best use case to be creating content that is intentionally unrealistic.

For example: someone doing deep work in an office whilst the building is being demolished with wrecking balls, jackhammers, and explosions - but they're unfazed because they're wearing noise cancelling headphones.

ChatGPT can come up with the ideas and prompts if you give it creative examples (there's so much inspo for this on Twitter). And even if Veo can be tedious and difficult at times, it's 100% a tool worth your strategy/editing team getting good at.

I really think that most (if not all) creative will be made through a tool like this within 12-24 months.

Claude projects are very, very useful

I think the best use case for AI in creative right now is building Claude projects for UGC scripts, headlines, VSL scripts etc. trained on your data and segmented out by persona. All backed by good CONTEXT DOCS (which is arguably the most important part).

For example, add a document with everything you know about generating static headlines, then plug that into the headline generation Claude project. The context is what separates one strategist's AI outputs from another.

Here’s one of my favorite Claude projects that we’ve built:

AI-generated content is still the minority

AI-generated content is still the minority of the ads we put out.

A lot of people are surprised when I tell them this given how we’re positioned, but the AI generation tools are just not good enough yet to take over non-AI generated content.

That being said, our AI generated content output is increasing month over month and we've had tons of winners from Arcads, image gen, Veo etc.

Higgsfield is also really good, probably the best at low production images right now and something I've been using a lot.

The more AI content, the more bullish I am on ugly ads

The more AI content we see on the feed, the more bullish it makes me on ugly ads. AI ads work (when done right), but I think people will crave content created by actual humans - at least in the short term.

Behind the scenes, organic UGC, yappers, authentic conversations, authority figures are all styles we're pouring into because they're difficult for AI to replicate. We're running multiple shoots a month to get these. Combine with whitelisting (which is working very well currently) to make them feel even more organic.

Here’s a perfect example of this and one of my favorite ugly ads ever:

What else should I be looking into? Hit reply and let me know what AI tools you're experimenting with!

Announcements:

We’re hiring! I’m currently looking for 2 key roles for experienced killers to join Adcrate:

• Creative Strategist (on the client side team)

• Creative Strategist Researcher (on my content team)

Click on the links to find out more. We’re looking for people who are hungry to work with some of the best of the best.

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See you next week,

Alex

P.S. If you're spending $100k+ monthly on paid social and want help implementing AI systems like these, my team at Adcrate is accepting applications to work with us. Check out our case studies at adcrate.co.