IBC
The first AI-created adverts are coming to TV as broadcasters look to compete with social media. ITV and Channel 4 explain why they are now scaling up
article here
Last month, Channel 4 became the latest broadcaster to offer advertisers the ability to create ads using Generative AI. It followed US media conglomerate Comcast (parent to Sky in the UK, the NBC network and streamer Peacock) which launched a GenAI service in June and ITV which began its trial over a year ago.
All are now looking to scale up the proposition which targets the hundreds of thousands of small and mid-sized businesses who currently advertise with Meta, Amazon and Google.
Additionally, ITV, C4 plus Sky are planning to pool resources into a new advertising marketplace in collaboration with Comcast in 2026. This will be based on Universal Ads, Comcast’s advertising platform “designed to make television as easy to buy as social media” and which includes video generation from Streamr.AI at its core.
“Our motivation is fundamentally to bridge the gap between the millions of advertisers that are out there and the thousands who currently advertise on ITV,” says Jason Spencer, Business Development Director ITV. “Essentially, what we see in that huge gap is a growth opportunity for us to engage those SMEs who are used to making their own ads on Meta and YouTube. We want them to see that actually TV is no longer outside of their reach.”
The argument is that historically TV advertising has been too expensive and too complex for most businesses. Only 7,000 out of the UK’s 3 million advertisers run campaigns on TV, according to clearance and regulation service Clearcast.
“We're producing very simple storytelling with a low cost of entry cost for an ad that can be delivered self-serve in 30 seconds. If an advertiser says they want a more sophisticated ad, they can upgrade to one made by our creative production team who will use, amongst other things, the enterprise licenses through GenAI.”
Breaking down the barriers
The aim is “democratise access to TV” as Barry John, head of sales operations, Channel 4 puts it. The problem this is solving is for advertisers who may, in the past, have thought TV was either too expensive or too complicated to buy or the process of putting advertising on CTV seemed out of reach for various reasons.
“We are providing a set of tools that can give an advertiser a suitable quality creative in order to advertise their products with us where they may previously have never thought it was an option.
“This is not about building a huge brand campaign with a long-term initiative. It is very firmly around the sort of small to medium-sized businesses whose objectives are typically sales of some kind.
“We feel there is a route with GenAI to provide a good enough ad for them that will allow them to be on the most powerful marketing medium that we've seen – TV - in a way that is time and cost efficient for them.”
Channel 4’s solution is claimed to cut the cost of producing a 30-second spot by around 90%. In 2024, ITV’s in-house team of five made about 1000 ads for 200 new-to-TV advertisers with budgets between £500 and £5000. The original GenAI ads launched last year took around 10 hours to create and cost around £500 each. Spencer says that cost has reduced even further.
Comcast claim that using GenAI, “What used to take months and thousands of dollars can now happen in a single afternoon.”
Both ITV and Channel 4 are offering the use of GenAI as a managed service for clients. Their inhouse teams will use various AI tools to create an ad, liaising with the client on expected outcomes and tweaking the creative accordingly.
Both claim the GenAI tools they use are ethically sourced, properly licenced and copyright safe. Both work directly from the marketing assets, like websites and existing videos, owned by the client and both back and forth between the AI models and the internal sales team to finesse prompt engineering. The ads will be subtitled automatically delivering further efficiencies.
Both broadcasters also use Streamr.ai, the video generator recently acquired by connected TV ad company Magnite. A key reason Channel 4 and ITV chose it over dozens of rivals is that Streamr has fed UK broadcast compliance rules (BCAP) into its video generation engine with the aim of having the ad cleared straight away by Clearcast at the first time of asking, therebny removing another impediment for advertisers.
GenAI ad workflows normalised at ITV
ITV has just switched to Streamr having launched using ‘enterprise licenses’ for models that likely include ChatGPT. ITV won’t say which other models it will continue to use them alongside Streamr for different elements of production. Over the past year AI has become “normalised” into ITV ad creative workflows.
“Brands don't necessarily come to us saying they want a GenAI ad,” Spencer explains. “When we look at a brief we see that it lends itself to using a range of tools and techniques from [real] video cameras and graphics packages to GenAI. AI has become integrated into what we do day-to-day. We're not just making ads that are solely end-to-end GenAI. There might be certain shots within certain ads using Generative AI. We might use AI for storyboarding or to speed the process in other ways so we can spend more time discussing with the client about how we can flex things.”
“We're producing very simple storytelling with a low cost of entry cost for an ad that can be delivered self-serve in 30 seconds,” Spencer says. “If an advertiser says they want a more sophisticated ad, they can upgrade to one made by our creative production team who will use, amongst other things, the enterprise licenses through GenAI.”
ITV has trained its entire sales team to be able to use the tech. “We've turned our commercial team into producer-creators,” Spencer says. “That's a door opener. We're using this as a pilot initially to see how this helps us to engage more SMEs. We're stress testing the capabilities of it now.”
He adds, “The market is quite tough at the moment. We're up against the Big Tech platforms who have a much more frictionless way of working with SMEs. What we've tried to do is chip away at the perceptions and this is a long-term thing. You have to keep saying it and saying it that the barriers to entry are not what people think they are. You can't just say it once and launch some tools and ‘hey presto’ everyone is sold. It's a matter of continuing that mantra and proving it.”
C4 moves into beta
As well as Streamr.AI Channel 4 use an AI product from Telana. John explains, “Streamr is meant for achieving direct response type outcomes such as including a QR code for consumers to activate and proceed with the sale.”
If the client’s marketing goals are more advanced, perhaps needing detailed planning, then C4 will engage with Telana for “a more hand curated process.”
Longer ads could be created by linking six five second clips together smoothed by postproduction for a more bespoke ad. “This would be used less for direct response and more for creating a marketing message around brand values.”
Channel 4 is now moving from pilot phase into beta and opening up to more SMEs. “There is a set of target advertisers that we will proactively reach out to who've already registered interest with us. It will grow from two to three clients this year to five to 10 then 15 a month from January.”
Universal marketplace for SME ads
With AI technology improving at pace and with tools available to automate the workflow from concept to publish, there is a question over the future of creative agencies. Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg has outlined plans for a completely AI-driven advertising business from detailed campaigns to the creative. Meanwhile, Amazon sellers can now generate video promos with a simple text prompt to an AI chatbot. The ads can appear on Amazon’s online marketplace and across Prime Video and Twitch.
Broadcasters are taking tentative steps in this direction too.
Launching in 2026, Channel 4, ITV and Sky will launch an advertising marketplace in collaboration with Comcast. Called Universal Ads it uses a AI Video Generator that mirrors Meta’s plans to fully automate ad production.
The marketplace will also allow easy access to on-demand and streaming inventory from the three sales houses through a single campaign powered by Comcast’s FreeWheels technology.
In May, Comcast launched a GenAI tool with Creatify (in which Comcast is an investor). The solution, integrated into Universal Ads, makes creating a TV-ready commercial “as simple as building a social media ad. No studio required. No pre-existing video assets needed. No large production budget.”
The targets are small business owners who are told by Comcast that “hat used to take months and thousands of dollars can now happen in a single afternoon.”
“AI is developing extremely fast but ultimately, we see this as an augmentation as much as an absolute pure creation tool,” says John. “This is not replacing creativity in its entirety because we don't think it will get to that point where it can do that as well set of human creatives can do in terms of understanding brand or consumer behaviour.”
He views GenAI as opening opportunities that wouldn't exist without it, such as the ability to create almost infinite varieties of the same creative. “You’ll create a core asset and then put it into the AI engine to output a different final frame for a particular type of person or specific location based on other consumer and retail data. Dynamic creative optimisation is where we think GenAI really comes into its own and where it will scale quickly.”
No comments:
Post a Comment