How Meta and Google Benefit From AI-Created Ads

Five months ago, app studio Sociaaal, which creates apps that help people identify their celebrity look-alike or suggest pick-up lines to score a date, started using generative artificial intelligence to create ads for running on social media, including YouTube. The AI-created ads included some Sociaaal’s marketing team say they never would have thought of, like a video of an older woman encouraging people with Gen Z lingo to download Sociaaal’s dating app Rizz God.

More importantly, Sociaaal and its ad agency were able to cheaply ramp up the number of ads they create, to 400 a month from 40. Using AI tools from startups such as HeyGen and Poolday AI, Sociaaal created enough variations of images, texts and videos to appeal to every type of potential customer. The tactic worked—CEO Patrick Stuart-Constant credits the company’s 65% growth in revenue over a four-month period—mostly subscriptions to its apps—to the increased variety of ads it devised.