The Data Says Your AI Hot Take Is Wrong

The advertising industry has been pretty clear on AI-generated ads: they're soulless, they're slop, they lack the ineffable craft that separates real creativity from machine output.

There's just one problem with this consensus. It appears to be wrong.

New research from System1 and Jellyfish tested 18 AI-assisted video ads against their database of 123,000 traditionally produced spots. The AI ads averaged 3.4 stars on emotional impact versus 2.3 for the traditional baseline—a 48% improvement. Coca-Cola's AI holiday ad, the one that sent marketing Twitter into collective meltdown over authenticity and “the death of craft,” scored a perfect 5.9 out of 5.9.

Yes, the sample is small. Yes, seven of the 18 ads came from companies with skin in the AI game. But dismissing the signal because you don't like what it says is exactly how industries die. Ask the Swiss. In the 1970s, Japanese quartz watches nearly bankrupted Switzerland's legendary watchmakers. The Swiss couldn't fathom that consumers would choose mass-produced precision over handcrafted heritage. They were wrong. Quartz was cheaper, more accurate, and—critically—good enough for most people. The Swiss watch industry lost 60% of its workforce before it figured out how to survive.

But survive it did. Not by pretending quartz didn't exist, and not by competing on the old terms. The Swiss came back because they stopped arguing about how watches were made and started focusing on why anyone would pay more for one. Taste didn't die—it got redefined. The craft moved from the mechanism to the meaning.

The study's most interesting finding isn't that AI ads performed well. It's that ads recognized as AI-generated actually scored higher than ones that passed as traditional. The spectacle AI enables—cinematic ambition on modest budgets—seems to be a feature, not a bug. Consumers aren't punishing the method, they're rewarding the outcome.

The question isn't whether you use AI. It's whether you have the taste to use it well.

And that's where the optimism lies. The best-performing work in this study didn't come from AI alone. It came from skilled operators who knew what to ask for—people with vision, strategy, and an understanding of what actually moves an audience. The craft hasn't disappeared. It's just migrated. From the hand to the eye. From production to direction. The operators who figure this out first won't just survive the quartz crisis of advertising. They'll define what comes next.

— Torsten & Peter

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