Can AI make Meta ads for a local newsletter?

Making one of these video ads by hand took me about four hours. Now we can build Meta ads inside lightbreak.

"You pick the brand, the location, the concept, it makes a video ad of Angel Stadium, Honda Center, about $2 in video, you pick your song."

What does the AI ad builder do?

1. Pick the newsletter brand.
2. Pick the location.
3. Pick a concept, like a five-famous-places template.
4. It generates a vertical video ad with local landmarks.
5. Pick a song.

Why show the plan before generating?

Because generation costs real money, somewhere around $1 to $3 per ad.

"Somebody's paying $2, and they have no idea if the AI is going to pick the right place. That's really dumb, right?"

The fix is to lay out exactly what we're going to do before we generate it: a scene-by-scene concept in plain language, like which five places the template will show, that you can edit. Otherwise you pay $2 for an ad that picked the wrong landmark or put an outdoor scene indoors.

Can AI make static ad graphics too?

Yes, fast. For a recruiting ad, all I gave an image model was my logo and a request for a nice-looking static Facebook ad. I asked for eight options on one graphic, each with a number in the corner, and told it which ones I liked. Then I asked for those individually so I could paste them into Facebook.

"Two years ago somebody's charging $1,000 to do this and it would have taken a week and the first four people would have failed. I did it in 30 seconds."

We also figured out how to automate nice Instagram carousel graphics through Canva, all inside Claude. Fast isn't the same as effective, though: one recruitment image ad made with ChatGPT didn't produce results.

How do I get AI to write better ad copy?

1. Work inside an AI project that already holds the brand's context.
2. Ask for Meta ad copy broken out by audience, one at a time. For one B2B brand I split employees from business owners and investors, and did employees first.
3. Tell it to think like a great ad copywriter: Sam Parr, Seth Godin, or any of the other greats.
4. Grade what comes back yourself.

Those few lines plus the project context already got really good copy. Not all of it fit, though. One option was the style of ad that helped The Hustle get so big. I gave it a C. It was fine, but that style didn't work for this case.

The skill my team and I both need to get better at is judging creative: what makes people stop in their tracks.

What should a human still decide?

• The concept and the hook. AI is good at generating hook ideas; each still needs an exact script, text, and footage.
• Whether the footage looks AI. See prompting AI video so it doesn't look AI.
• Whether it works. Run new AI creative in a test campaign first.