AI Ad Advice: How Brands Should Approach Ad Creation With AI

Yesterday, the Magazine Manager blog wrote about the value of localized messages in advertising, specifically with videos.

Today, I want to take other video-focused research to glean larger insights that could help media advertisers in general.

That research comes from NielsenIQ, which found consumers to rate ads that were entirely generated through AI to be “significantly more annoying, boring, and confusing than non-AI-generated ads.”

“AI-generated content can create a negative halo in consumers’ minds, even when they do not explicitly perceive it as such,” says NielsenIQ’s article, which promises further findings to be forthcoming. “When using AI, brands should ensure careful prompting and iteration to deliver a quality final product.” 

In surveying 2,000 consumers, the study used such methods as electro-encephalogram (EEG) and eye-tracking to measure how brains responded to ads, finding that AI-generated ads elicited weaker memory activation compared to those perceived as higher quality.

“Memory helps us understand whether what we are seeing fits with something that we already know or have experienced — essentially, whether we have an existing template within our brain to which we can match what we are seeing,” the article explains. “This decreased memory engagement was evident, even for the most edited and polished ad: Consumers’ brains were registering that something wasn’t quite right, even if they weren’t explicitly aware of it.”

AI ads were successful in activating brand associations, which NielsenIQ says shows value in AI’s role in identifying “the strongest branding assets for brand managers to leverage in advertising and marketing.”

“Brands and agencies who want to use AI-generated ads for early-stage idea testing must keep in mind that their quality can have a big impact on results,” the article says. “When viewers are distracted by odd visuals or are fixated on an unrealistic person or object, this increased cognitive effort ultimately affects how they lean in and the message they take away.”

For more information about how to improve your email deliverability, download A Beginner’s Guide to Email Marketing by Mirabel’s Marketing Manager: