Can AI make Meta ads for a local newsletter?

Making one of these video ads by hand took me about four hours. Now we can build Meta ads inside lightbreak.

"You pick the brand, the location, the concept, it makes a video ad of Angel Stadium, Honda Center, about $2 in video, you pick your song."

What does the AI ad builder do?

1. Pick the newsletter brand.
2. Pick the location.
3. Pick a concept, like a five-famous-places template.
4. It generates a vertical video ad with local landmarks.
5. Pick a song.

Why show the plan before generating?

Because generation costs real money, somewhere around $1 to $3 per ad.

"Somebody's paying $2, and they have no idea if the AI is going to pick the right place. That's really dumb, right?"

The fix is to lay out exactly what we're going to do before we generate it: a scene-by-scene concept in plain language, like which five places the template will show, that you can edit. Otherwise you pay $2 for an ad that picked the wrong landmark or put an outdoor scene indoors.

Can AI make static ad graphics too?

Yes, fast. For a recruiting ad, I asked an image model for eight options on one graphic, each with a number in the corner, and told it which ones I liked. Then I asked for those individually so I could paste them into Facebook.

"Two years ago somebody's charging $1,000 to do this and it would have taken a week and the first four people would have failed. I did it in 30 seconds."

We also figured out how to automate nice Instagram carousel graphics through Canva, all inside Claude. Fast isn't the same as effective, though: one recruitment image ad made with ChatGPT didn't produce results.

What should a human still decide?

• The concept and the hook. AI is good at generating hook ideas; each still needs an exact script, text, and footage.
• Whether the footage looks AI. See prompting AI video so it doesn't look AI.
• Whether it works. Run new AI creative in a test campaign first.