Television commercials have always been one of the most powerful tools in advertising. For decades, brands invested heavily in creating short, impactful stories that could reach millions of viewers at once. These commercials were carefully planned, expensive to produce, and slow to execute.
Today, artificial intelligence is changing that entire system.
This change is not just about making ads faster or cheaper. It is reshaping how commercials are created, who can create them, and how audiences experience them. In many ways, AI is turning television advertising into something more flexible, more responsive, and more experimental than ever before.
A Shift from Filming to GeneratingTraditionally, making a TV commercial meant organizing shoots, hiring actors, building sets, and spending weeks in production and editing. AI is now replacing much of that process with generation instead of filming.
Brands can now create video commercials using AI tools that generate scenes, voices, and even characters based on simple text prompts.
A strong example is Google’s AI-generated TV commercial promoting its “AI Mode” feature. The ad was created using generative video technology rather than traditional filming methods, showing that AI can now produce content ready for broadcast.
Sourcehttps://9to5google.com/2025/10/31/google-ai-tv-ad/Another example is Coign, a financial services company that produced a full TV commercial using AI in less than a day. What once required weeks of work was completed in hours.
Sourcehttps://www.axios.com/2025/06/05/ai-generated-commercial-coign-veoWhat this shows is simple but powerful: commercials are no longer limited by physical production. They can now be created digitally, quickly, and at scale.
Lower Costs, More CreatorsOne of the biggest impacts of AI is cost reduction.
Television advertising has always been expensive. Production costs, combined with media placement, made it accessible mostly to large companies. AI is changing that.
For example, an AI-generated commercial by Kalshi, aired during the NBA Finals, reportedly cost around two thousand dollars. A traditional commercial in the same space could cost millions.
Sourcehttps://www.fluid.ai/blog/top-5-ai-generated-ads-of-2025At a larger scale, platforms like Spectrum Reach have already enabled thousands of AI-powered TV ad campaigns, allowing smaller businesses to enter the TV advertising space.
Sourcehttps://www.tvtechnology.com/news/spectrum-reach-has-deployed-more-than-15-000-ai-powered-ad-campaignsThis is an important shift. TV advertising is no longer only for big brands. Smaller companies and even startups can now compete creatively on the same platform.
Creativity Is Becoming CollaborativeAI is not just helping with production. It is also becoming part of the creative process.
Instead of designing every detail manually, creative teams now work with AI to generate ideas, visuals, and variations. The role of the human shifts from creator to director or curator.
A well-known example is the Heinz AI campaign. When AI tools were asked to generate images of ketchup, many results looked like Heinz bottles. The brand used this insight to create a campaign showing that even AI “recognizes” Heinz as the default ketchup.
Sourcehttps://adintime.com/en/blog/best-ads-made-by-ai-n294This shows a new kind of creativity. Ideas can come from how machines interpret the world, and humans shape those outputs into meaningful stories.
From One Ad to Many VersionsTraditional TV commercials are fixed. Everyone sees the same version.
AI is changing this by making ads more flexible and personalized.
Streaming platforms are already experimenting with AI systems that adjust ads based on viewer behavior, preferences, or even the context of the content being watched. Tubi, for example, is exploring AI to match ads with specific scenes and audience types.
Sourcehttps://www.wsj.com/cio-journal/why-tubi-is-betting-on-ai-to-win-over-gen-z-viewers-778b07fcThis means that in the future, two people watching the same program might see different versions of the same ad. The TV commercial becomes less like a fixed message and more like a system that adapts to each viewer.
Faster Response to CultureAnother major change is speed.
Traditional commercials take time to produce, which makes it hard for brands to react to current events or trends. AI allows ads to be created much faster, sometimes within hours.
This gives brands the ability to respond to cultural moments in real time, similar to how social media works. TV advertising, which used to be slow and planned, is becoming more dynamic and reactive.
The Challenge of AuthenticityDespite all these advantages, AI-generated commercials are not perfect.
One of the biggest challenges is emotional connection. While AI can create visually impressive content, it sometimes lacks the depth and authenticity that human storytelling provides.
For example, Coca-Cola’s AI-generated holiday ads received criticism for feeling cold or unnatural, even though they were technically impressive.
Sourcehttps://www.kapwing.com/resources/11-brands-making-video-ads-with-ai-its-not-just-coca-cola/This highlights an important limitation. People still respond strongly to human emotion, and AI has not fully mastered that.
S. M. Monowar KayserLecturer, Department of Multimedia & Creative Technology (MCT)
Faculty of Science & Information Technology
Daffodil International University (DIU)
Daffodil Smart City, Savar, Dhaka, Bangladesh
Visit: https://monowarkayser.com/
