Struggling with creative bottlenecks? Did your boss say to test and use more creatives but did not give any new resources? Are you exploring AI tools just out of curiosity? 

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Regardless of your intentions, we’re obsessed with the new AI creative solutions that keep popping up from human-like avatars to localisation and creative variations. 

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We’re particularly excited about the democratisation of content creation, which is also reflected in a recent study. This opens tremendous opportunities for small players to utilise strategies that previously were only for the big players, and it also helps the big ones to do paid social more efficiently. 

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All in all, we envision and build a future in which AI tools help unleash humans’ creative potential by automating the boring parts while advertisers can focus on what matters: strategic decision-making and creative storytelling.

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Without further due, we promised in the title to showcase how to create ad creatives for free with AI. We’ll present some of our favourite use cases and tools that we’ve used throughout the past few years. We keep this blog updated for more use cases.‍

Use Case 1: Free AI UGC videos

What would be more awesome than having a tireless content creator promoting your brand and products in any language? AI-generated, human-like avatars make this a reality. We call it “avatar-generated content” or “AGC”. 

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Giving AGC a spin is fast and easy. At least on the surface, the different services offer similar types of features. The process typically goes like:

1. Head out to, for example, Captions, HeyGen and Argil and opt-in for the free trial. 
2. Pick your avatar and scene from the existing library of AI avatars.
   Hint: Some of the avatar solutions allow you to create a digital clone of yourself (or anyone else with the person’s content) instead of using the library of non-exclusive avatars. 
3. Write the script that you want your avatar to speak. You can play around with different languages easily. 
4. Render the ready video. 

Depending on the intended use of the AGC, some AGC solutions offer simple video editing options or you can take the rendered video to your preferred online video editor like Canva or VEED to make your final touches.

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When working with AGC our strong recommendation is to always be clear on the use of AI-generated content by watermarking the videos with a tag like “AI Generated” to avoid confusion within your audience.

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The state-of-the-art of human-like avatars is extremely convincing, coming in several languages and dialects. Actually, we’ve been utilising the AGC format in several advertising use cases, incl. product-specific videos and personalised videos:

• Case Study 1: Creative Volume and Variety
• Case Study 2: 5x Decrease in CPL

Use Case 2: AI Idea and Script Generation

Probably the first useful use case of large language model-based chatbots was idea generation. This can be especially useful when hitting writer’s block or when simply in need of ideas. 

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To make a realistic use case of using chatbots, we take the perspective of Mike, who is working on new creatives for Nike’s sneakers for paid social. We want to create mid-funnel (consideration) and bottom-funnel (direct purchase) creatives that are on-brand and suited for Instagram Reels ad placement. 

1. Our adventure starts on ChatGPT, in which we brief the chatbot about our needs. In this step, it is possible to go much deeper into the brand and campaign objectives by providing more data (text, documents, websites) to the chatbot, but in this example, we keep things general. 

2. Next, we request ChatGPT to provide us with video scripts. We’re not making this easy: we request two unique scripts per funnel stage and specifically want to use a user-generated style of content in the consideration phase.

In this quick example, we use ChatGPT. Based on our experience, Claude is at least equally as good at helping with this type of task, and for example, reading and memorising existing brand documents. 

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We haven’t yet found a good enough video generation solution to turn the bare scripts into ready ads, but are constantly following the process of video generation tools like OpenAI's Sora and Kling AI. While the big players are already testing this, e.g., Coca-Cola Holidays are Coming campaign in 2024, we see that the best approach relies on recycling and repurposing existing brand content and enriching and personalising it with AI-powered elements like voice-overs, subtitles and AGC. It can start with simple elements like your product pictures and USPs. 

Final thoughts‍

If you have a favorite AI tool or workflow or you would like to get our notes on a specific use case, share it with us! In our pipeline, we have examples coming, for example, for product images and videos and localised voiceovers and subtitles. In the meantime, check out FutureTools for a comprehensive list of advertising-focused AI tools.

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Once you hit the need for scalability and performance on paid social, you can always reach out to us! Plug (pluuug.net) supercharges catalog-based paid social advertising with AI agents who automate effective paid social campaigns on Meta and TikTok.