Google isn’t just trying to get consumers to use generative AI when they’re searching for answers, shopping online, or using their Pixel devices. The tech giant is courting agencies by encouraging them to use AI when creating ads.
The initiative, called “Impossible Ads,” debuted last year as part of Google’s AI Lighthouse program in an effort to bring adland into Google’s rapidly evolving suite of GenAI tools, according to Sadie Thoma, director of US B2B marketing at Google, and agencies like VaynerX and Dept. are using Google Gemini and other features to develop creative for clients.
As the generative AI race continues to heat up, Google is onboarding other agencies, too, in a new cohort that Thoma said is set to debut at Cannes.
“Last year, we said, ‘there’s so much AI hype, there’s so much talk around AI in the market,’” Thoma told Marketing Brew. “Wouldn’t it be interesting to take this Lighthouse program to the next level and essentially ask creative agencies, ‘What would it look like if you were to infuse Google AI and Gemini through your entire creative development process?’”
Take a chance: One of the latest tests to come out of the AI Lighthouse program is a creative campaign the agency Dept. built for its client Pit Viper, an eyewear brand, Natalie Kunstadter, a creative VP at the agency, said. As part of the program, Dept. used Gemini to build AI prompts from agency-provided scripts; then the agency fed those prompts into Google’s AI-powered video-generation tool Veo 2 to create scenes for the final product.
The use of Google AI cut production time by 400%, according to Google, and the campaign, which rolled out on YouTube and other platforms, has reached 10.3 million users, with website sessions increasing by nearly 20% according to Google Analytics data cited by Dept. The campaign also saw an impressive completion rate, according to Kunstadter.
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“A 92% view completion rate is, I think, the highest that much of this agency has ever seen on a 30-second ad,” she said.
Dept. has continued to use Google’s GenAI tools internally, particularly Veo 2, Kunstadter told Marketing Brew (although so far, it hasn’t used it in other production yet). The tool has been useful when the team is working on shorter timelines, she said.
“We also now see such quick shifts in consumer behavior that, for organic and paid social media, you just need to be so reactive,” she told us.
North Star: Impossible Ads offers advertisers access to creative consultations and office hours, among other services, to help them become more familiar with Google’s generative AI tools, Thoma said. After Google debuted Veo 2 in December, the company showed program participants how to leverage the tool.
Thoma said that the program and the tools are not designed to replace creative talent. “This is not in any way taking over for human creativity,” she said. “This is helping put amazing creative human minds together with amazing tools to showcase what happens when creativity is unleashed with GenAI.”
So far, most of the major agency holding companies are involved in the initiative, according to Thoma, and continued efforts to promote AI-generated campaigns could serve to attract other agencies and marketers. While participants are only doing one campaign for the program, the goal is to evolve creative for the entire industry, she said.
“If you are BBDO doing this for AT&T,” she said, by way of example, “you’re going to now start to use these tools and work in new ways throughout your creative development process for all of your clients, not just for one. We’re seeing these agencies take on this new way of working and these new possibilities at scale, which is really exciting.”