By Kesava Reddy, Chief Revenue Officer, E2E Networks
The advertising world is fast-paced and demands constant content creation. Generative AI (Gen AI) is fast emerging as a game-changer for ad agencies, streamlining content creation processes in several ways. A recent study by PwC, titled The Global Artificial Intelligence Study, suggests that AI could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, with advertising being one of the industries benefiting significantly from AI technologies like Generative AI. In this article, I will outline many ways through which Generative AI streamlines the content creation process for ad agencies.
Unleashing creative inspiration
Gen AI technologies like Large Language Models (LLMs) can act as a perfect brainstorming tool, generating new ideas based on keywords, target audience data, and current trends. This helps the creative professional quickly create multiple drafts and explore fresh concepts that might not have been considered otherwise.
Additionally, LLM-powered workflow can help automate repetitive tasks like scriptwriting, ad copy generation, copy-editing. In fact, LLMs are so powerful that when contextual user data is provided through emerging AI architectures like Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG), they can even generate personalized headlines and product descriptions targeted towards specific users.
Image synthesis
Gen AI technologies like Stable Diffusion, with variants like SDXL, and its many fine-tuned versions that have been created by users, such as Juggernaut XL or RealisticVision, can help make original artwork, paintings, and illustrations in various styles and genres, offering endless creative possibilities for artists and designers. The models are so capable that they can be trained to apply artistic styles and effects to images, transforming them into works of art inspired by famous artists or art movements. This opens up many possibilities.
Animators, for instance, can use it to design characters and creatures for ads. It can also assist in creating unique and eye-catching designs for logos, helping businesses establish distinctive visual identities. AI tools can help restore old or damaged images by removing noise and enhancing details and colors, useful for improving image quality. Also, these models can help in creating storyboards quickly, acting as a powerful assistant to professionals in the creative industries.
Audio synthesis
A powerful capability of Gen AI models in the domain of audio is to craft original music loops that can serve as background music to ads. It can produce life-like effects like footsteps, explosions, and animal sounds. This solves a perennial problem in the M&E domain, of finding good stock content.
What’s more, it can mimic human voices with different accents and speech patterns. Some examples are the open source audio synthesis models like Audio Gen and Music Gen, which can generate royalty-free music and sound effects tailored to specific demographics and emotions.
Text-to-Speech AI models like WhisperSpeech can turn text into spoken content, making news, blogs, or social media posts sound natural and emotive. If an ad agency is looking to create podcasts, they can use Gen AI technology to generate podcast episodes, interviews, or discussions, simulating multiple voices for richer content.
Video production efficiency
Currently, creating high-quality video ad content is resource-intensive. Gen AI can help edit and improve video quality by removing noise, enhancing images, and adding effects.
When combined with speech to text models, one can build workflows where captions or subtitles can be automatically added to videos. A similar workflow can be used to condense long videos into shorter versions by extracting key moments or highlights, by identifying key moments in text, and clipping the video automatically, streamlining the editing process.
In the coming future, Gen AI will help cut down costs on expensive photoshoots for D2C product ads. AI models like Stable Video Diffusion are starting to become capable enough to create high-quality, unique video and image assets based on text descriptions. This allows for quick ad production, reduced expenses and exploration of various new creative concepts.
Other capabilities are also emerging, such as Wav2Lip, which is a wonderful lip sync technology that can convert boring still photographs into lively videos of speeches or music. Another example would be AI-generated celebrity endorsements that can mimic models, sportspeople or actors, producing short ads minus the need for photoshoots.
Interactive & personalised experiences
In the past, tailoring ad content to individual audience segments in real-time would have been an extremely challenging task. With Gen AI tech, however, you can now craft unique ad experiences for every customer segment. AI tools can personalize ad visuals and discount offers based on user data. This level of personalization can lead to higher engagement and conversion rates.
Also, open LLMs like Llama 3 and Mistral, when deployed on advanced cloud GPUs, can allow you to create a workflow where you can translate and localize ad content for a global audience easily, further enhancing reach. In India, Indic language LLMs like OpenHathi or Navarasa may help play an important role translating English-language ads for regional audiences in the future.
Chatbots powered by AI can also create interactive ad experiences. Imagine a clothing ad where a virtual assistant helps you pick out styles based on your preferences. This personalized touch can significantly boost engagement.
Effortless A/B testing
A/B testing different ad variations is crucial for optimization. However, manually testing and iterating on different ad variations to identify the most effective ones is a laborious process. Generative AI powered by Stable Diffusion technologies can create a vast number of variations with slight modifications, allowing for highly granular testing and identifying the most impactful combinations. This eliminates the need for manual iteration and can significantly speed up the optimization process.
Final words
Generative AI offers a treasure trove of possibilities for ad creators. By harnessing its power, you can craft impactful ad experiences that resonate with your audience and achieve your marketing goals. While human creativity will always remain essential for developing truly unique and impactful ideas, Gen AI technologies act as a wonderful assistant helping brainstorming and content creation. It is only a matter of time before all ad workflows eventually incorporate Gen AI into their content creation workflows.