Dive summary:
- Amazon has unveiled a new solution that uses generative artificial intelligence (AI) to quickly convert product images into video ads, as detailed in a blog post.
- The video generator, currently in beta, is part of Amazon’s Sponsored Brands campaign suite and is available to advertising partners at no additional cost. French skincare company Gellé Frères has been testing the offering in anticipation of the Black Friday rush.
- Amazon also announced a new live image feature for its existing image generator feature, which lets brands add flourishes, like steam rising from a coffee cup, to previously static images. The tools come as major digital platforms are betting on generative AI to attract more ad spend.
Dive Overview:
Amazon’s new AI-powered video generator aims to expand access to an upper-funnel channel that can be prohibitively expensive for small and mid-sized marketers. The videos themselves are fairly basic, based on product images, but the one-click aspect of the technology, which comes at no additional cost to advertisers using Sponsored Brands, could spark interest. Amazon made the announcements as part of its Accelerate event last week.
Gellé Frères has already been experimenting with the video generator during its end-of-year marketing campaigns. In a press release, a spokesperson for the French skincare company said the solution “significantly reduced the time it takes to produce a video ad” and paved the way for video advertising for a broader range of products in its portfolio.
To use the video generator, a marketer on the Sponsored Brands platform can submit their product page and access a drop-down menu, selecting “choose an AI-generated video.” The tool will then display several video options for the marketer to choose from and edit as desired. In a demo video, a lavender-scented lotion is fed into the video generator, creating ads that show sprawling fields of the flower. The user then adds additional text to highlight the product’s qualities.
Availability of the video generator and live image capability is limited initially, and Amazon will refine the technology based on advertiser feedback.
The e-commerce giant has started strengthens its generative AI offerings Amazon launched an AI-powered image generator last fall. Appliance maker Whirlpool leveraged the image generator for its holiday marketing last year with a campaign that generated more than 2 million impressions and a 2% click-through rate, above category benchmarks. Expanding the concept to video is part of Amazon’s effort to attract more upper-funnel ad spend.
Other digital platforms, including Meta and Google, have made generative AI a priority, with an emphasis on efficiency and scale of production.
Amazon’s advertising segment Revenue rose 20% from a year earlier in the second quarter to $12.77 billiona figure that missed Wall Street estimates and marked a slowdown in growth from previous quarters.
