• by Ray Schultz , Columnist, 9 hours ago

Scoff if you must, but AI-generated ads performed at the same level as those created by humans in a new study from Taboola.  

They did it by appearing more human—i.e., with “trust signals” like a big human face. Moreover, they did it more effectively than actual human designers, according to the study, which was done by researchers from Columbia, Harvard, TUM, and CMU. Indeed, AI-generated ads were more likely to include these trust signals than human-made creative. 

“By analyzing over 500 million impressions, we were able to move past the hype of GenAI and uncover its real impact in large scale settings,” says Oded Netzer, vice dean for research, Columbia Business School. “Our findings prove that when AI is used to enhance human cues—like the trust found in a human face—it doesn't just match human performance; it often sets a new ceiling for engagement.” 

What this means for publishers is not yet clear. It may help advertisers get creative out more quickly and keep their costs down. But we hope that they don’t start testing whether AI can out-perform human journalists, as we are sure some have already done.  

The study utilized what it called a quasi-experimental "sibling ads" approach. It compared matched pairs of AI-generated and human-made ads created by the same advertiser for the same campaign, and on the same day.  

Researchers were thus able to isolate the impact of the GenAI creative while controlling external variables such as the identity of the advertiser and factors like timing, audience targeting and landing pages. 

The research found that in raw data AI achieved an average click-through rate of 0.76%, compared with 0.65% for human-generated ads. However, they showed comparable performance when very tight statistical controls were applied.  

AI ads that did not look like AI drove the highest engagement levels of all groups, outperforming human-made ads and AI that were seen as artificial.  

The study analyzed hundreds of thousands of live ads running on Taboola’s performance advertising platform Realize. There were more than 500 million impressions and three million clicks. 

“Taboola’s platform provided us with a literal gold mine of real-world data that is simply unavailable in a lab setting,” Netzer adds.