Marketing
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4 days agoAI ads win over millennials, but Gen Z still isn't convinced
Gen Z views AI-generated ads nearly twice as negatively as millennials, with 39% expressing negative sentiment compared to 20% among millennials.
After nearly 13 years, the Svedka Fembot - a busty breast-plated robobabe who's a favorite among nostaglic and, uhh ... thirsty fans - has returned to the Super Bowl in the first almost-fully AI-generated ad to be featured during the annual sporting showdown. The vodka brand partnered with the same studio, Silveside AI, behind the divisive "dystopian nightmare" Coca-Cola ad of Christmas 2024.
In an announcement, Elon Musk's AI company xAI unveiled a new tool called "Halftime" which "dynamically weaves AI-generated ads into the scenes you're watching." Instead of cutting to an ad break, Halftime manipulates the characters onscreen into deviating from the script and prominently brandishing a product of a marketer's choice. The tool is meant to make ad "breaks feel like part of the story instead of interruptions," the company said.
A bear leans in the window of the Jeep Grand Cherokee while a woman holding a microphone asks the bear a question. The woman's mouth does not quite sync with the words she is delivering. Then, the bear starts talking. Something is amiss. The opening scene of Jeep's artificial intelligence-generated advertisement may look real to some and uncanny to others. Regardless, it has generated millions of views on social media.
The Instagram post promoting the handbag, which has a label to say it was made using AI, shows a "surreal" collage of models spliced between Valentino logos and its DeVain bag. At one point it shows models seemingly emerge from an ornate gold version of the handbag. At another, the brand's logo transforms into people's arms, before these morph into a coalescing swirl of bodies.
Key Stat: 32% of US and UK consumers say AI is negatively disrupting the creator economy, up from 18% in 2023, according to July 2025 data from Billion Dollar Boy. Beyond this chart: Gen Z's AI tolerance depends on the use case. Some 54% prefer no AI involvement in creative work, but only 13% feel this way about shopping, according to an August 2025 Goldman Sachs survey.
The Verge reports that the streamer envisions a near future where your TV is flooded with AI-generated advertisements. No longer is it going to be about the top 200 advertisers, Roku CFO and COO Dan Jedda told investors during a recent investor conference hosted by Citi. It's going to be about 100,000 advertisers. Oh, dear God, please no. He apparently went on: You can use gen AI to [make] a very well-produced commercial, noting that you can be up and running within minutes.
Vodafone made a commercial starring an AI avatar posing as a real lady. This is interesting because Vodafone is a major global brand and not a fly-by-night TikTok company using a ridiculous deepfake of Jackson Galaxy to sell cat toys. The tells in the commercial are obvious and what one would expect. The AI avatar's hair is a bit off, which ruins the charade that this is a real person.