• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, 7 hours ago

A handful of brands acknowledged that they used artificial intelligence (AI) in the creation of their Super Bowl XL ad this year -- but they either went all in like Svedka Vodka or used it sparingly.

Alaska Airlines, for example, used AI in a scene for a regional spot. Avocados From Mexico said they used a combination of generative and predictive AI, and Oakley Meta will show off its AI-enabled glasses.

Research from Taboola and several universities suggest that AI-generated advertisements perform comparably to human-made ads when humans in ads look real.

Columbia University, Harvard University, Technical University of Munich, and Carnegie Mellon University helped Taboola analyze how generative AI ads performed against those made by humans when running in real campaign environments.

The research analyzed hundreds of thousands of live advertisements running on Realize, Taboola's performance advertising platform, which runs more than 500 million impressions and three million clicks.

The analysis found that AI ads achieved an average click-through rate of 0.76% compared with 0.65% for human-made advertisements.

The study, titled AI Ads That Work: How AI Creative Stacks Up Against Humans, provides insights related to concerns that advertisers have on whether artificial intelligence can produce creative content that matches performance and conversions of those created by humans.

Researchers matched pairs of ads within identical campaigns and time frames for AI-generated and human-made advertisements that showed statistically equivalent performance.

AI-generated ads performed best when they did not look like they were created using AI. The study also found that one of the most important factors in making an ad feel "human" and trustworthy was the presence of a large and clear human face.

AI-generated ads were more likely to include these trust cues than their human-made counterparts, and specific sectors such as food and beverages and personal finance were early adopters of AI ads.

This year, agencies will use AI in more ways than just creating a Super Bowl ad, or even for ads in general.

Findings from a new agency survey by Duda, a white-label website-building platform for agencies, shows that a focus on business performance is a top priority.

Some 78% are prioritizing improved efficiency and higher margins using AI, while 64% will automate processes and 44% will expand service offerings using AI.

Traditional search engine optimization (SEO) remains a higher priority than AI optimization, and 25% of respondents are planning to use AI for dynamic and personalized content on websites.