Media Buying Briefing: Gen AI creative emerges as new battleground between TV and platforms

Last week, Comcast’s Universal Ads business – launched in January to hoover up budget from brands like skincare company Palmer’s and QB1 Jerky, a snack brand founded by a former Miami Dolphins football player – launched a generative AI creative solution, powered by tech firm Creatify. It offers small businesses in the U.S. the chance to build out creative assets for free based on existing photography and product info, and then run them on linear and streaming TV.

“We’re not saying you should stop advertising on social. But TV has a place, and so we’re trying to make sure we can remove any of the friction around that,” said James Borow, vp product and engineering for Universal Ads.

The initiative followed similar launches from Google and Amazon (the e-commerce giant added gen AI capabilities to an existing product) in September, and earlier efforts floated by British broadcasters Channel 4 and ITV. The latter has been the market’s unlikely pioneer, adding a gen-AI enabled creative tool to its in-house production offering last September in an attempt “to make TV advertising accessible for all brands and democratize creative production,” Jason Spencer, ITV business development director, told Digiday.

“We’ve got big ambitions to grow what we’re doing with SMBs,” he added.

Though leading agencies have pursued a bullish approach to AI usage, it’s only recently that the industry’s begun to run campaigns featuring AI-generated elements – 41% of SMBs would advertise on a new platform if they had access to better creative tools, according to an October 2024 survey of SMBs in Brazil, the U.S. and U.K. by the National Research Group.

Jeremy Goldman, an analyst with eMarketer, suggested that once granted the opportunity, smaller advertisers might be less cautious in their use of the tech.

“There’s no approvals, there’s no red tape,” he said. “It’s much easier to pivot if you’re small.”

Advertisers have, in theory, been able to run AI-generated ads on TV ever since generative video tools first emerged in 2023. It required a pretty dab hand to get a digestible 30-second spot from Runway, as well as existing knowledge of ad buying processes. The tools recently released by broadcasters aim to make asset creation easier and quicker and integrate it into the ad buying process. Comcast’s, for example, is embedded in its Universal Ads buying platform.

“It is the closest approximation of buying social ads we could possibly create,” said Borrow. 

Meta and Google have, for years, dominated the budgets of small business advertisers. Broadcasters hope that by removing a roadblock to their use of TV, they can tempt them to spend more outside the walled gardens and stem the flow of dollars to digital channels.

On the face of it, there’s few benefits here for agencies. The clients using ITV and Comcast’s service don’t work with creative shops, and often eschew media agency assistance. “We’re not replacing creative agencies. We’re helping where there isn’t a creative agency in place,” said Spencer.

But some agency execs see angles worth exploring. Firstly, gen-AI tools can be used to produce cut-down assets from existing ads, reducing budget spent on production and allowing small advertisers to embrace a larger variety of formats and channels. 

Secondly, even using a generative creative tool takes time that folks running small or medium-sized businesses don’t have; if staff at indie shops can use Amazon’s Creative Studio or Asset Studio (Google’s offering) on their behalf, they can likely use that to encourage higher spending.

“Good quality audio and video is still fairly time consuming,” said Ryan Lammela, vp of channel activation at Butler/Till, agency. He estimated that two thirds of its clients are small businesses. “The idea that we could generate ourselves is very exciting.”

The programmatic fringe benefit

While Comcast, ITV and Channel 4 hope to divert digital cash, Amazon’s using its gen AI Creative Studio to take DSP competition down market.

The e-commerce giant’s efforts to unseat The Trade Desk have involved a menu of incentives designed to tempt big brands and the industry’s largest media agencies – discounted or free CTV inventory, post-auction discounts or low tech fees.

But Amazon also sees value in scooping up spending from the medium sized advertisers that are beyond the scope of holding company agencies, but which wield enough budget to work with an indie or specialized shop. 

“Their incentivization push has been pretty aggressive,” said Destaney Wishon, CEO and co-founder of BTR Media.

Access to tools like Creative Studio is encouraging small brands to double down on their Amazon presence and invest more in video and CTV units. “$15k is very quickly turning into a much larger, larger investment into their streaming TV,” said Wishon, adding: “It’s democratizing TV.”

In the month prior to its launch of Creative Studio, it invited agencies within its Amazon Ads Partner network (to offer feedback on beta versions of the tool; indie shops BTR and Swell Media were among them).

“They [Amazon] want people moving up the funnel,” said Michael Healey, svp of marketplaces at Swell Media.

Nick Amos, advertising specialist at BTR, said he expects to see takeup among clients that typically spend $3-5 million on Amazon advertising annually. After running spots for garden supplies firm Bird Buddy this month, it’s set to launch campaigns with five further clients over coming weeks, Amos said. “I see it as a massive opportunity,” he added.

eMarketer’s Goldman, though, sees an iron fist inside the velvet glove. Like the other players launching gen AI tools, Amazon’s currently playing softball with agency partners – but its push to automate more and more of the marketing operation means that might not last forever.

He predicts: “This is going to hurt agencies in the long run.” 

Color by numbers

It can be a dangerous thing when the perception gap between marketers and consumers widens, because it can lead to misguided investments. Kantar last week released its Media Reactions 2025 report, which aims to sort media brand perception from consumers and how they feel about ads in these environments, juxtaposed against where marketers plan to invest in 2026. And there are some gaps, including:

• Globally, marketers’ trust in X has hit an all-time low, with a net 29% of marketers planning to decrease their spending on the platform next year.
• In the U.S., however, X made it back to the top 5 media brands consumers ranked for advertising equity, outranked in order by only The New York Times, Amazon, Apple TV and Netflix.
• On a global scale, consumers ranked the top 5 media channels by preference, starting with Amazon and followed by Snapchat, TikTok, Twitch and Prime Video.
• That’s compared to marketers’ top 5 preferences, which start with YouTube, followed by Instagram, Google, Netflix and Spotify.
• Consumers appear to be more receptive to ads, up to 58% versus 47% in 2024, but less than one-third of marketers are confident that their organization consistently produces channel-tailored advertising and content.

Takeoff & landing

• The IAB released its updated 2025 U.S. ad spend outlook, and it’s not pretty, as the org revised its projection downward by 1.6 percentage points, from +7.3% to +5.7%, driven largely by advertiser concerns over rising tariffs. The study found that 91% of buyers were concerned with the economic ripple effects of tariffs, particularly in sectors like auto, retail, and consumer electronics. 
• Interestingly, WARC‘s revised global ad spend outlook was more optimistic, forecasting an increase in growth of 1.2 percentage points to +7.4%, amounting to $1.17 trillion, which according to WARC is first uprating in more than 12 months.
• Account moves: IPG’s UM landed global media duties, including planning, strategy and buying, for Tourism Ireland after a competitive review … Independent Mile Marker landed media duties, including strategy, planning and buying for brand awareness, retail media, and direct-to-consumer (DTC) campaigns, for maternal health care brand Lansinoh, following a review … Havas Media in the U.K. successfully defended its media work for Dominos pizza, and has now held the account for 27 years.

Direct quote

“We are now in this unique environment in time where ChatGPT is becoming important. It’s still sending lots of traffic, often to major retailers. But this will drastically change in the future if these things continue to go in the direction they’re going. This traffic will not be free in the future.”

— Juozas Kaziukėnas, an independent analyst and advisor on commerce, as told to Modern Retail’s Allison Smith.

Speed reading

• Seb Joseph, in his most recent installment of the Future of Marketing Briefing, connected the Jimmy Kimmel imbroglio to Google’s trial and TikTok’s new ownership – the connection being marketers’ fear.
• Sam Bradley looked into the efforts of various smart TV OEMs to get into selling their ad inventory programmatically.
• Modern Retail’s Julia Waldow explains the shift in search from SEO to GEO – generative engine optimization – which is necessary to optimize web content to show up in results from AI-driven search platforms.