• by Laurie Sullivan , Yesterday

Google has added generative AI (GAI) capabilities to Asset Studio, a creative tool that lets advertisers generate, edit, and turn images and videos into assets for ads, as well as review content before it goes live across media channels — for use in Google Ads.

The news -- announced Wednesday, just in time for the holidays -- reduces the need for third-party design software.

Creators and advertisers told Google that one of the biggest challenges they had is the amount of time and effort it takes to create high-quality assets for ads, Jyotika Prasad, senior director of product management at Google, told MediaPost.

“The idea is to bring your creative assets to life from start to finish,” Prasad said.

The update helps marketers produce higher quality content, more personalized assets, and improve performance for campaigns.

“Trying to create creatives one by one can become very difficult,” she said, when advertisers try to create or update hundreds of thousands of assets.

Google also added its most advanced image model, Imagen 4, a text-to-image AI model from Google DeepMind that generates high-fidelity, 2K resolution images from detailed text descriptions. The GAI model adds fine details and textures to provide photorealistic content.

Imagen 4 will soon enable advertisers to create videos from text and images at a minimum of videos 5 seconds in length, using one image and minimal input, such as music, text, brand name and logo. Adobe, and Luma AI also are all offering or developing this capability. 

Advertisers working with Google's tools can turn stand-alone product shots into lifestyle images in seconds with just a few clicks to create campaign-ready assets in seconds.

For example, advertisers can upload a product photo of an item such as  Academy Brand's Conrad Jacket. With a simple text prompt like "a young man walking in the park," Google AI will generate a new image featuring a model wearing the jacket in that exact scene.

The same can be done with up to 100 photos simultaneously, with the ability to add new settings and objects in the photos.

Google uses the example of taking an image of Pierre the Penguin from The Woobles and dropping it into a winter wonderland -- perhaps even adding a winter sled and snow. 

Still images, logos, and text descriptions also can be converted into video assets, and the user can select any image, video or text assets in Asset Studio and generate a shareable link, so the team can review.

The Ad Preview upgrade enables creators and advertisers to review the ad and see how it appears across formats and channels, for any campaign type. Generate a sharable link for Ad Previews, making it easy for others to review ads.