Proof-of-concept study reveals equivalent effectiveness between AI-generated and human-produced ads in low-involvement contexts, suggesting AI can reliably support early advertising pretesting.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes it feasible to generate highly finished ads for pretesting, before final, human production. In this ‘proof of concept’ study, AI was used to make static and multi-shot video ads. When compared with the real ads they were based on, there were no significant differences observed in ad-effectiveness (recall, recognition, brand choice, brand attitude, and ad liking), under the specific conditions tested. These conditions included a low-involvement context in which several real and AI-ads were viewed, where all the AI-generated ads were carefully curated and professionally screened, and were about factual information rather than emotional experiences. Labelling ads as AI-generated may be compulsory soon, but this research showed that under these specific conditions, the presence of AI-disclosure, prior to exposure, made no difference.
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Bellman et al. (2026) studied this question.
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