Two Meanings of "AI Ads"
- AI-generated creative. The ad itself, meaning the pictures, the motion, the voice and the music, is produced with generative AI instead of a camera, a studio and a crew.
- AI-run campaigns. The ad platform uses AI to decide who sees the ad, where and at what bid. Meta Advantage+ and Google Performance Max are the best-known examples. The creative can be entirely traditional.
The two are independent: you can run a filmed ad through an AI-optimised campaign, or an AI-generated ad through a manual one. The rest of this guide is about the first meaning, because that is where the cost of advertising has changed the most.
What Can Be Generated Today
Six product shots generated on our own machines, with no camera and no stock footage. The products are generated examples, not client work; the titles are real text added in the edit.
- Product shots and scenes: a bottle on wet marble, a burger with steam rising, an apartment at sunset, built around a real photo of the product.
- Motion: short clips of a few seconds each, with camera movement, light and atmosphere, cut together into a 6 to 30 second ad.
- A presenter: a generated person who delivers a script to camera.
- Voice and music: voice-over in several languages and original music composed for the ad, so there is no licence to clear.
- Still images: product stills, lifestyle scenes and seasonal visuals for the feed, stories and banners.
What AI Still Gets Wrong
- Text and logos. Video models scramble writing. Latin letters come out wrong often; Arabic script almost always. Text and logos have to be added afterwards as real graphics.
- Your exact product. Ask a model to imagine your product and it will invent the label, the shape or the colour. The reliable way is to start each shot from your own photo.
- Consistency across shots. Keeping the same person, product and look from one clip to the next takes deliberate work; it does not happen by itself.
- Long continuous takes. Models produce short clips. An ad is built in the edit from many of them.
- Judgement. A model does not know that a hand looks strange or that a scene is wrong for your market. Someone has to look at every frame.
What an AI Ad Costs
A traditional video ad pays for a crew, a studio or location, equipment, talent, and then the edit. An AI ad removes the shoot: what remains is the concept, the direction, the generation time and the edit. That is why the price is a fraction of a filmed commercial, and why it does not fall to zero: the part people still do is the part that decides whether the ad is any good.
As a reference, our own starting prices at LB Clouds are $950 for a single video ad of up to 30 seconds, $1,400 for an AI presenter ad, and $2,900 a month for a pack of four video ads and ten ad images. The exact price is fixed before work starts. Details are on the AI advertising page.
The Platform Rules
Meta (Facebook and Instagram), TikTok and YouTube all accept AI-generated ads, and all three ask you to label realistic AI-generated content. In practice:
- If a viewer could mistake a generated person, place or event for a real one, label it.
- An AI presenter should be presented as an AI presenter, not as a customer or an employee.
- The ordinary advertising rules have not changed: no invented testimonials and no claims you cannot support.
When AI Ads Work, and When to Shoot for Real
AI ads work well for product-led ads (perfume, food, fashion, jewellery, electronics), seasonal offers that need new creative every few weeks, the same ad in several languages and formats, and businesses that could never justify a shoot at all.
A real shoot is still better when the ad depends on real people, such as your team, your actual customers or a known face; when it has to show your real premises exactly as they are; or when the footage is evidence of something, such as a before and after. A generated version of those would be misleading, and customers notice.
How to Brief an AI Ad
- Three good photos of the product, plus your logo as a file.
- The offer in one sentence: what you sell, at what price or with what promise.
- Who should see it, and in which country and language.
- Where it will run: Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, YouTube, a screen in the shop. The format follows the platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are AI ads?
The phrase covers two different things. One is ads whose pictures, video, voice or music were created with generative AI instead of a camera and a crew. The other is ad platforms using AI to choose the audience, the placement and the bid, as Meta Advantage+ and Google Performance Max do. This article is about the first: AI-generated ad creative.
Are AI-generated ads allowed on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube?
Yes. The platforms accept them and ask advertisers to label realistic AI-generated content. The usual advertising rules still apply: no misleading claims and no fake testimonials.
How much does an AI video ad cost?
At LB Clouds a single video ad of up to 30 seconds starts at $950, an AI presenter ad at $1,400, and a monthly pack of four video ads and ten ad images at $2,900 per month. The price is fixed before work starts.
Can I make AI ads myself?
Yes. The tools are public and improving quickly. What takes time is direction: getting the real product right, keeping one look across shots, throwing away the clips that look wrong, and adding the logo, the text and the captions properly in the edit.
Do AI ads work in Arabic?
Yes, as long as the Arabic text is added in the edit as real text. AI video models cannot write readable Arabic, so letting the model draw the words is the most common mistake in AI ads for Arabic-speaking markets.
LB Clouds makes AI video ads, presenter ads and ad images for businesses in Lebanon and across the Middle East.
Want to see what an AI ad of your product would look like? Send us three photos and tell us where you advertise. We reply with a concept and a fixed price.
Ask for an ad concept