Get ready for the AI ​​advertising apocalypse

I’ll admit, without any shame at all, that I really like ads. Artistic, funny, quirky, emotional — TV ads were the TikTok of my childhood before any of us used terms like “short-form video.” But like most creative things in my life, AI sucks the fun out of it. It will suck even harder this year.

Advertisements are small films, posters, illustrations, and photo shoots with a primary purpose: to burn whatever product is introduced into your brain as quickly as possible. It requires a great deal of creativity and, in some cases, a large production budget. And while the creative in me loves seeing the fruits of that labor, it also makes ads the perfect testing ground for generative AI technology, as brands race to make content creation faster and cheaper. Many image and video creation models have seen huge visual improvements in the past year, prompting more advertisers to adopt them in campaigns.

According to A Marketing Week He studiesmore than half of 1,000 brand marketers surveyed used some form of AI in their creative campaigns in 2025. Another study by the Institute Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) found that 90 percent of advertisers were using or planning to use generative AI for video ads in 2025, and predicted that such tools would be used in 40 percent of everyone Advertisements by 2026.

That’s why we’re increasingly seeing AI announcements televisionin MagazinesAnd across Social media. Some are explicit about the use of generative AI, e.g Coca-Cola’s sloppy holiday adsbut a lot of it isn’t – making us question everything we see that seems a little “off.” Sometimes, these can be human beings who emit strange feelings in the valley, like the ads we saw McDonald’s and DoorDash Where people look very polished and move in unnatural ways. Or perhaps CGI and VFX that shift inconsistently in ways that would be strange for a VFX artist to do on purpose, e.g. This ad is for Original Source shower gel. Why does this man’s face keep changing? Why does he keep trying to turn it into a Memoji?

But while generating AI in commercials may seem obvious to some, recording AI in the wild isn’t something most humans are good at yet. the Association for Computing Machinery ACM found that humans can accurately recognize AI-generated images, videos, and audio only 50 percent of the time, and this is one of the Higher success rates We have seen. Kantar, the market research company I helped develop Coca-Cola AI holiday campaign in 2024also found that most ad testers couldn’t tell they were AI-generated, despite the AI-generated visuals and clear on-screen disclosure.

“The people who matter most – Coca-Cola’s target audience – still enjoy it, feel good when they see it, and love the brand because of it,” said Kantar’s managing director. Dom Boyd said campaign. “A lot. In fact, Kantar’s (ad testing) shows that the vast majority of people didn’t notice the ad was AI-generated (we asked), and the execution is one of the highest performing this year in terms of potential short-term sales.”

However, public reactions to AI announcements have been mixed. In a November 2025 Kantar studyConsumers were discouraged from ads that included obvious references to AI such as “distracting or unnatural visuals,” but responded well to ads that used AI well enough to go largely undetected. The same study also found that people had stronger emotional reactions to AI-generated ads compared to those produced without it, but the reactions involved were typically negative.

We see a lot of this negativity around obvious AI announcements Via forums And in comments On social media platforms. So there is r/AiSlopAds subreddit A community dedicated to publicly shaming AI advertising examples. There are several commonly cited reasons for this feeling, including: Moral and Environmental concerns About generative AI, seeing its supposed cost-cutting and efficiency benefits as something that cheapens the brand, and just thinking about it sounds unappealing.

Money (duh) is the obvious reason why increasingly more brands are willing to risk this negativity to explore generative AI. Sure, AI ads for prediction market platform Kalshi are Reddit users mocked himbut it’s a particularly crazy and confusing example that aired during a The 2025 NBA Finals in prime time The slot costs only $2000. It was created in Only two days By one person using Google Veo 3 AI model. It’s not hard to see the appeal of that efficiency, and the extreme dislike of the ad suggests that people found it memorable, even if for the wrong reasons.

A memorable ad can become a company’s legacy. Nike’s famous slogan “Just Do It” (1988) was created for the fitness company First major television campaign By Weeden and Kennedy, with related commercials showing ordinary people doing their exercises. Readers in the UK may also remember 1999 Guinness “Surfer” ad. (Directed by Jonathan Glazer with ABM ad agency BBDO), is a world-famous advertising masterpiece that took nine days to shoot in Hawaii, using groundbreaking visual effects to combine live action and heavy water surfing with CGI horses.

Production budgets for commercials aren’t frequently disclosed, but when produced traditionally, they can cost a pretty penny. Media spend on Old Spice’s “The man your man can smell.” Its cost is estimated at $10 million, smaller than several major advertising campaigns that also aired in 2010. There is also the famous “1984” commercial directed by Ridley Scott to introduce the Apple Macintosh computer, which reportedly had a then-unprecedented production budget of $900,000, equivalent to $2.8 million in 2026.

These famous ads are memorable for being nonsense. Coca-Cola says its AI-driven holiday commercials are successful, but it just replicated its famous red truck campaign, which has already become… king Decades of positive nostalgia through true human creativity and production efforts.

But while creating a successful campaign entirely through generative AI may be difficult now, it will get easier as tools and models continue to improve. The world of technology and media Banking on it Now that big brands like Nestlé, MondelezCoca-Cola has already set a precedent. Google and Microsoft produced ads using their generative AI models Amazon gives Sellers tools to populate their site with AI ads. The Meta is expected to be released Fully automated AI advertising on its social platforms this year, and Nvidia is building tools that can serve an endless array of Personalized and personalized video ads.

Even the marketers behind the famous and beloved ads are on board. ABM BBDO has launched its own AI platform, and Wieden and Kennedy are openly using AI in their production lines. “I think AI is an incredibly powerful tool, but it’s still a tool,” Neil Arthur, CEO of Wieden and Kennedy, said in an article. LinkedIn News Interview. “I think it allows us to scale more efficiently, but I don’t spend any time worrying about whether AI will replace us as humans.”

The use of generative AI is expected to be very prevalent in advertising this year, with early trends already predicting a pushback movement, aimed at building loyalty with consumers seeking to avoid artificial content.

“2026 will be the year of things AI can’t do, or honestly, things AI can’t do (so far so well),” Tom Glover, founder of creative agency American Haiku, said in a statement. “ad age”Creativity Forecast Report. “Expect chaotic, hand-drawn, ornate or irregularly assembled design, and ideas that enjoy playing with the boundaries of advertising, returning to the simple pleasures of 16mm film, analogue recording, and ‘letting go of the mistakes’.”

Some brands have already joined this resistance. Aerie’s promise not to use AI in its advertising was a promise from the clothing brand Most popular Instagram posts Last year, Polaroid advertised its Flip instant camera with bus posters mocking the technology, one declaring, “AI can’t generate sand between your toes.”

“We’re an analog brand that basically gave us permission: We can own that conversation,” said Patricia Varela, Polaroid’s creative director. Business insider. “That layer of imperfection that makes us human and beautifully imperfect — something we think is important to remind people about.”

Some generative AI tools can now imitate analog and retro average patterns fairly effectively, which will make distinguishing them from human-made content more difficult.

Many tools are provided to deliver content that looks good also Polished, however, creating an echo chamber where everything begins to look the same without human creativity to differentiate. It’s also easy to spot mistakes in photos and videos that strive for this perfection. Every abnormal hallucination and unexplained visual error means that the project did not involve any human creative professionals to identify or correct them. Advertisers find that they care less about creativity in their campaigns, through a A recent study from the IAB Which shows that cost efficiency, time saving and scalability are being prioritized from now on.

With that in mind, I implore brands and marketing agencies to remember that: a good Producing an ad by hand doesn’t have to be expensive or difficult. One of the best commercials ever was achieved by filming a group of men screaming “Wassoop“At each other while drinking Budweiser. This is something that can only be demonstrated by delightful human eccentricity.