An Ipsos × Newhouse School (Syracuse) study, reported by Harvard Business Review on September 3, compared 20 video spots: 10 real brand films — Cheerios, Chewy, Fiat, Febreze, Herbal Essences — and 10 machine-generated replicas, a brief reconstructed by Gemini, images generated by Sora 2. 3,000 American consumers rated them.
No one saw the difference. Only 25% identified the replicas. 40% were unable to decide. But the original films sell 14% more in the short term and build 17% more brand equity. Invisible to the naked eye, visible in the numbers.
One gap explains the rest: 49% of the original films rely on storytelling, versus 30% of the replicas. With the same brief, automated production drifted toward product demonstration and a sequence of beautiful shots. It lost the narrative along the way. So it isn’t a technology problem, but a matter of direction.
Entrusting your budget to tool experts simply because they’re cheaper is the best way to throw it out the window. You don’t buy competitiveness; you buy blandness. Campaigns that are clean, compliant, validated in a committee… and perfectly invisible. It’s more serious than a failed campaign. A failed campaign, you can see. This one passes all the filters and yields nothing.
The real question has never been “human or machine.” It has always been: who designs?
Humans design. The machine executes.
That is where the best of both worlds lies. An idea held by someone who knows what they’re telling, and a power of execution that multiplies it: faster, farther, at a cost that becomes sustainable again. Technology does not replace creativity. It finally makes it affordable. Provided there is one at the start.
Source: Adam Peruta, “Research: AI-Generated Ads Perform Worse Than Human-Made Ones — Even When Customers Can’t Tell Them Apart”, Harvard Business Review, September 3, 2026 — Ipsos Creative|Spark study.
#AdvertisingEffectiveness #Storytelling #Creativity #BrandStrategy #MarketingROI #CreativeDirection #AI