How big brands are using AI to make ads (and how you can too)

In November 2024 Coca-Cola remade one of the most recognizable Christmas ads ever made, the glowing trucks rolling into town, using generative video from AI studios Secret Level, Silverside AI and Wild Card. It was the biggest brand on earth putting AI on its most sacred piece of advertising.

The reaction was loud. Artists and viewers called it soulless and pointed at the uncanny trucks and faces, as NBC News reported. Coca-Cola did it again anyway in 2025, and says the work passed its creative benchmarks. Backlash online and performance in market turned out to be two different scorecards.

Made with: AI studios Secret Level, Silverside AI and Wild Card (2024)

Toys"R"Us Studios and the agency Native Foreign premiered this one-minute brand film at Cannes Lions in June 2024. It tells the story of founder Charles Lazarus dreaming up the store, with Geoffrey the giraffe, and it was among the first brand films made with OpenAI's Sora while the model was still in early access.

According to Marketing Dive, the team went from concept to finished film in a few weeks, cutting hundreds of generated shots down to a few dozen and finishing with traditional VFX and an original score. Reviews were split between "a genuine first" and "uncanny".

Made with: OpenAI Sora, plus traditional VFX and an original score

For Anthony Joshua's contract renewal in March 2024, director Wes Walker built this spot in about three weeks on a limited budget, mixing AI-generated video, stills and voiceover with 3D, 35mm film and existing footage.

Calling it the "first AI-powered sports commercial" is what got it in trouble. Creatives pointed out that it leaned on footage from earlier human-made work without credit, as TechCrunch covered, and credits were added afterwards. The ad itself mostly held up. The launch post did not.

Made with: AI video, stills and voiceover mixed with 3D, 35mm film and existing footage

This is the one that changed the conversation. Filmmaker PJ Accetturo made this chaotic, very online spot for the prediction market Kalshi, and it aired during the 2025 NBA Finals.

He reported making it in two to three days for roughly $2,000, mostly with Google's Veo 3, with around 300 to 400 generations to get 15 usable clips (eWeek). One person, a national broadcast slot, and a production budget smaller than most brands spend on a single photo shoot.

Made with: Google Veo 3, with Gemini and ChatGPT for scripting

Progressive's "Drive Like an Animal" spot for its Snapshot program uses AI-generated animals driving badly, with Flo's familiar voice on top. The insurer's reasoning was smart: cartoonish animals suit AI's look and stay clear of the uncanny valley.

Comment sections still called it slop, and the video above is a commentator taking it apart. Progressive told Marketing Dive the work still moved the needle on business results. Like Coca-Cola, it is a reminder that the loudest audience is not always the buying one.

Liquid Death did not make this. A small independent team did, as an unsolicited spec ad, using Google's Veo 3, and it went viral in mid-2025 because it sounds exactly like the brand: deadpan, absurd and a little dark.

The tools were cheap (Broadcast reported a few hundred dollars in credits). What people shared was the writing. A brand with a distinctive voice is easy to imitate well, by fans and, increasingly, by AI.

Made with: Google Veo 3

This is not a Nike ad. It is a creator showing what a Nike-style film looks like when you stack Veo 2, Kling, Suno, Midjourney and Flux, and it is the kind of portfolio piece AI filmmakers now use to pitch brands.

Nike's own most celebrated AI-adjacent work is older and very different: "Never Done Evolving" (2023, by AKQA) used machine learning on archive footage to play 1999 Serena Williams against 2017 Serena, and won the Digital Craft Grand Prix at Cannes Lions.

Made with: Veo 2, Kling, Suno, Midjourney and Flux (per the creator)

trivago used to run about 20 country spokespeople across dozens of productions. Since its late-2023 brand refresh it has used one presenter, with AI adapting him into other languages, which Skift reported cut production time roughly in half.

The spot above is a recent US execution of that same one-presenter campaign. The point is not one ad. It is a single shoot feeding every market.

Klarna has been the most vocal about using AI as a cost lever in marketing. Its CEO said generative image tools like Midjourney, DALL-E and Firefly would save the company around $10 million a year in marketing (Marketing Dive), and he later used an AI avatar of himself to present quarterly results.

The spot above is one of Klarna's own ads. We could not confirm whether this particular film used AI, so treat it as a look at the brand, not proof. The real lesson is the operating model: AI for the high-volume imagery, people for the ideas.

Liven, a self-discovery app, runs the kind of ad performance marketers know well: a relatable story, a simple voiceover, and a lot of variations in the feed. Viewers regularly point out that its creative looks AI-generated.

It is a different game from Coca-Cola's. Nobody is judging a single film here. The ad that wins is the one that survives testing, which makes the number of good variations you can make each week the thing that counts.

Back in 2022, Heinz and the agency Rethink asked DALL-E 2 to draw "ketchup". It kept drawing something that looked like a Heinz bottle. That was the whole ad: even a machine thinks ketchup means Heinz (Ad Age).

It went on to win awards, and it aged better than almost anything since, because the AI was not making the ad. It was proving the brand's point.

Made with: DALL-E 2, with agency Rethink

The clip above is Google advertising Veo 3, its video model, to consumers in the Gemini app. Google has also put the model to work on its own advertising: 9to5Google reported its first fully AI-generated TV ad in October 2025, a travel spot starring a plush turkey, made with Veo 3.

Note the casting. Like Progressive's animals, a toy turkey sidesteps the uncanny valley completely.

Made with: Veo 3 (for Google's AI-generated TV spot)

These come up in plenty of AI-ad roundups, but we found no evidence that either was made with generative AI. They are animated spots from Airbnb's "Get an Airbnb" campaign, and the "Airbnb or A.I.bnb" idea that often gets attached to them was a student concept, not an Airbnb campaign.

We include them because they show the other side of the trend. When every feed fills up with generated video, a crafted, simple idea stands out more, not less.

Made with: Traditional animation, no generative AI reported

Verizon brought back Mike Myers as Dr. Evil, with Rob Lowe and the rest of the cast, for a 2026 spot directed by Jay Roach (MediaPost). No AI here: it is a live-action celebrity reunion.

It is a useful benchmark. This is what a nostalgia play costs when you need the real actors, the real director and the real rights. Most brands will never have that budget, which is exactly why the AI route exists.

Made with: Live action, no generative AI reported

The most telling examples on this list come from the companies building the models. Anthropic's "Keep thinking" campaign, made with the agency Mother in 2025, centers on real makers and inventors on film (Campaign). OpenAI's ChatGPT campaign, directed by Miles Jay, is built on everyday moments with real people (Campaign).

Neither is sold as AI-generated. When the brand is the AI, the safest way to look human is to show humans.