Pretesting with AI-generated static and video ads | Scientific Reports - Nature

Download PDF Abstract Artificial Intelligence (AI) makes it feasible to generate highly finished ads for pretesting, before final, human production. In this ‘proof of concept’ study, AI was used to make static and multi-shot video ads. When compared with the real ads they were based on, there were no significant differences observed in ad-effectiveness (recall, recognition, brand choice, brand attitude, and ad liking), under the specific conditions tested. These conditions included a low-involvement context in which several real and AI-ads were viewed, where all the AI-generated ads were carefully curated and professionally screened, and were about factual information rather than emotional experiences. Labelling ads as AI-generated may be compulsory soon, but this research showed that under these specific conditions, the presence of AI-disclosure, prior to exposure, made no difference. Subjects Information systems and information technology Psychology Science, technology and society Funding The AI-ad generation and data collection were funded by MediaScience. MediaScience also partly funds S.B.’s salary as the MediaScience Research Professor at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute. Author information Authors and Affiliations Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, Adelaide University, Adelaide, SA, Australia Steven Bellman University of Bridgeport, 126 Park Avenue, Bridgeport, CT, 06604, USA Sid Ali Ourradi MediaScience, Austin, TX, USA Duane Varan Authors Steven Bellman View author publications Search author on: PubMed Google Scholar Sid Ali Ourradi View author publications Search author on: PubMed Google Scholar Duane Varan View author publications Search author on: PubMed Google Scholar Corresponding author Correspondence to Steven Bellman . Ethics declarations Competing interests D.V. and S.A.O. both work for MediaScience, which developed the software that produced the ads tested in this research. However, S.B. is employed by an institute that receives funding from multiple companies, including MediaScience’s competitors. Sponsors provide funding on the condition that the institute remains completely independent, with written acceptance that sponsors have no influence over data analysis or its interpretation. S.B. independently analyzed data provided by MediaScience and wrote this article. The views expressed represent S.B.’s alone and not necessarily those of MediaScience. Additional information Publisher’s note Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Supplementary Information Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material. Supplementary Material 1 (download PDF ) Rights and permissions Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . Reprints and permissions About this article Cite this article Bellman, S., Ourradi, S.A. & Varan, D. Pretesting with AI-generated static and video ads. Sci Rep (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-67219-0 Download citation Received : 14 April 2026 Accepted : 12 August 2026 Published : 15 August 2026 DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-026-67219-0 Share this article Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Get shareable link Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Copy shareable link to clipboard Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative Keywords Advertising Pretesting Artificial intelligence Static display ads Video ads