AI is rewriting the rules of ad-making, from bringing scripts to life on screen to driving better ad conversion.
When prediction market Kalshi aired a 30-second ‘unhinged’ GTA-style cinematic ad during the NBA finals, it looked like something straight out of a high-end production studio: sweeping visuals, polished storytelling, and immersive sound.
One would imagine creating that spot would have cost Kalshi big bucks, but the reality was quite the opposite. There were no cameras, crew, or million-dollar budgets involved. Instead, the whole thing was put together in two to three days and at 95% less cost by an AI creative agency using Google’s new Veo 3 and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
As Kalshi expected, the ad spot immediately went viral, garnering millions of views, and it was soon succeeded by another viral ad.
PJ Accetturo, the brains behind the agency’s work, said on X that these “high-dopamine Veo 3 videos will be the ad trend of 2025,” indicating a much bigger, full-stack AI-driven shift in the ad film industry. But here’s the thing: this transformation has been brewing for quite some time at different levels of the advertising pipeline, from ideation and creation to personalization, localization, and delivery.
Making ad films with AI
Much like any other project, creating ad films using AI also starts from basic ideation and brainstorming. You must come up with a concept that meets the brand’s goal. Once that’s done, AI can come into play and go full throttle — ensuring faster turnaround times, much lower costs, and the ability to move through various iterations of a concept.
Accetturo, for instance, built on his initial idea for the Kalshi ad by co-writing with Gemini. He first locked in the initial script with AI, after which he used the same tool to generate a series of prompts (based on the script) that went into Veo 3 for production, saving not just time and money but also all the CO2 his team would have spent on planes for shoots.
Previously, the limitations of AI tools forced teams to generate prompts for images instead, going from text-to-image and then image-to-video. Now, it’s direct: you go from text prompts to consistent, high-quality videos in a matter of minutes. Fred & Farid’s AI-first creative agency Ai[magination] was also able to accelerate its workflows this way, producing AI spec ads that once took weeks in mere days using Runway’s platform.
“Our tools are being used throughout the creation process – from ideation and storyboarding to generating final shots and editing…We have customers that build advertisements from start to finish in Runway, and we also work with companies that are using us for smaller aspects of the pipeline,” Alejandro Matamala Ortiz, Runway’s co-founder and chief design officer, told Future Nexus.
While Veo 3 has gone viral for its native audio capabilities, Runway continues to draw a large chunk of brands and agencies with its cohesive, one-stop platform, allowing end-to-end production with follow-up editing (thanks to a new AI model called Aleph). This, as Ortiz pointed out, includes both large advertising agencies (like R/GA, Publicis, and Monks) as well as brands across retail, e-commerce, entertainment, and more. AMC Networks has also teamed up with them to accelerate marketing, advertising, and production workflows.
“We see a wide variety of use cases. For example, Coca-Cola’s 2024 holiday ads were largely generated and used widely. On the other hand, we (also) see much smaller brands with limited resources using our tools to run campaigns they otherwise wouldn’t. One of Mexico’s largest funeraries used our API to generate over 60,000 leads from a two-week image animation campaign that would not have been possible without the scalability and cost savings provided by Runway,” he explained.
Ads don’t stop at video
While producing ad films, animations, and promotional videos is the best (and easiest imagined) use case of AI in advertising, several other workflows in the ad pipeline are also being optimized with AI.
For instance, just like videos, one can develop content and static visual assets for ad campaigns, including those for social channels, billboards, and even magazines. Loveart and Recraft are two interesting new examples of tools in this category, allowing teams to design posters and banner ads from simple text prompts with the consistency of their brand’s voice and style.
Arie Tom, the chief marketing officer at GlassesUSA, a leading online retailer of prescription eyewear, said the company saved “dozens of production hours” by generating product images and backgrounds for Meta ads with AI. Plus, these AI-powered ads have “delivered 25-30% higher click-through rates, along with lower CPCs, directly improving conversion rates and ROAS.”
Another notable case is of localization, where tools like ElevenLabs, Dubverse, and HeyGen come in, enabling teams to dub their ads in different languages while preserving the content’s original emotion, nuance, and context. This helps teams shoot the ad once and scale it to other applicable geographies, without investing in re-shoots or edits. Many of these tools even ensure lip sync while dubbing the content into a different language.
Interestingly, these voice tools also include cloning technologies that enable personalization across campaigns. For example, the “Say It With OREO” campaign used AI to deliver each consumer a personalized message in Bollywood actor Farhan Akhtar’s voice.
AI for better ad conversion
Many teams are also using AI to automate granular workflows and improve the conversion rate of their campaigns.
GlassesUSA is driving post-launch optimization, with AI tools helping them monitor creative fatigue, flagging underperforming ads, and recommending timely optimizations or swaps. “This has cut manual reporting time by nearly half and extended the performance lifespan of winning campaigns,” Tom said.
YouTube has also announced a Gemini-powered feature called Peak Points, pinpointing moments of peak viewer engagement and offering advertisers prime ad placement windows for maximum impressions and clicks.
There are also younger upstarts like Rembrand and Acast that use AI differently to help brands with their advertising campaigns.
Rembrand, for instance, enables optimization with virtual product placement in relevant content with the help of AI, allowing any brand to become part of the content and/or leverage the content for use in a campaign.
“In two recent cases with leading US brands, we saw the overall video completion rates increase by as much as 50%, meaning that viewers did not skip the traditional interruptive video ads as much as they had previously, against benchmarks. Additionally, our virtual product ads saw a 2x video completion rate and a 30% increase in consideration and intent,” Omar Tawakol, CEO of Rembrand, told Future Nexus.
Acast, on the other hand, is using an AI-powered media planner that functions as a search engine to help advertisers quickly identify relevant podcast audiences for their campaigns, cutting down planning time by 92% in some cases.
For instance, an advertiser could describe their target audience in plain language, such as “I want to reach women in Canada interested in investing,” and the platform surfaces the best-fit list of relevant podcasts (sometimes even those never previously considered) to collaborate with.
“The tool replaces manual guesswork with data-driven recommendations and precise targeting…Early indicators for podcasts with under 50,000 weekly listens (recommended by it) show a 14% increase in median purchase rate and a 35% increase in median visit rate, indicating an increase in purchase and visit rates for smaller shows,” Milly Botes, the VP of Product at Acast, noted.
Still, creatives are here to stay
AI is reshaping the advertising pipeline from top to bottom, and what we’re seeing now is likely just the beginning.
For brands, this means faster iteration, quicker turnaround, and significant cost savings. But this transition doesn’t mean creatives are being or will be replaced.
In a field as audience-driven as advertising, the human touch will remain essential. With AI acting as an always-on collaborator (just like what JARVIS is to Iron Man), teams will be able to streamline execution, but the core ideas and originality will always stem from human creativity and emotional depth. That’s what ensures ads stand out without feeling “soulless,” as some critics described last year’s Coca-Cola campaigns.
“The easier it becomes to make content, the more content will be created. That doesn’t mean that more of that content will be of high quality. I think intuition will become increasingly important – the ability to make something people love will never not be critical, even more so when so many people have these tools at their fingertips,” Runway’s Ortiz emphasized.
