Sky Media launches AI-powered creative toolkit to onboard smaller businesses to TV
Sky Media has launched an AI-powered “creative advertising toolkit” to make it easier for SMEs to create TV ads in the same way they generate ads for online platforms.
The toolkit provides access to Waymark, an AI creative studio that helps brands “instantly” generate “TV-ready” ads.
Users can feed the tool content and assets derived from their brand’s website. Waymark then generates a 10-second, 15-second, or 30-second ad spot based on those assets, complete with scripts and tailored options for different audiences or locations.
A spokesperson for Sky Media claims the tool “dramatically reduces the cost, time and complexity of TV ad creation”.
The move follows the launches of similar generative AI creative tools by Channel 4 and ITV in recent months. However, ITV’s business development director Jason Spencer recently told The Media Leader that strong direct demand from SMEs for its tool has yet to surface.
Now, with three comparable tools in the market across the UK’s largest commercial broadcasters, each will focus on honing a distinct go-to-market strategy to onboard smaller businesses to TV.
In the meantime, the trio have collaborated on a forthcoming SME marketplace, aimed at making ad planning and buying simple for SMEs, and a new measurement solution, Lantern, which will deliver short- and long-term outcomes measurement for the medium.
“TV has always set the standard for attention and trust, but the creative process can feel like a barrier for many smaller businesses,” said Sky Media’s investment director, Steven McHenry. “Our new AI-powered toolkit removes that barrier. It allows brands that are new to TV to create cost-effective ads, test and refine them, and launch campaigns with real confidence and impact.”
Confidence building
One aspect that sets Sky Media’s toolkit apart is its “creative intelligence” framework, developed in partnership with adtech firm Daivid. The aim of the framework is to help SMEs test and refine the quality of AI-generated creative output.
Daivid uses a predictive AI model to compare the “emotional ad profiles” of other creative outputs from brands in the same sector. It estimates metrics like emotional intensity and likely viewer emotion based on the content portrayed in a given ad, and offers a composite creative effectiveness score that can be compared against average-performing ads.
“Waymark’s instant creative, combined with Sky’s addressability, gives brands a powerful way in,” commented Daivid founder and CEO, Ian Forrester. “With Daivid’s predictive emotional intelligence built into the process, those advertisers can be confident their ads will have an impact from day one.”
Waymark is backed by Comcast, NBCUniversal, and LIFT Labs, and has already “supported” more than 30,000 businesses in the US. Sky Media claims Waymark has helped drive over $400m in ad revenue.
The Waymark tool also incorporates the Clearcast BCAP approval process, which helps ensure that ads created using AI meet UK TV advertising standards, increasing the likelihood of formal sign-off from the regulator. The same is true of the AI creative tools developed by ITV and Channel 4.
Once an ad is created, SMEs can target live TV audiences via Sky Media’s AdSmart or reach video-on-demand viewers. Targeting tools include geo-targeting, drive-time targeting, and deterministic targeting based on verified data.
The toolkit is expected to be further enhanced in February with data from Sky Media’s effectiveness databank, dubbed “Norman”, to help SMEs draw insights from thousands of previous campaigns that ran on Sky.
Norman is intended to be a predictive product, helping advertisers understand likely outcomes that depend on variables such as brand size, advertiser category, and budget.
The aim, according to the spokesperson, is to “give businesses confidence and de-risk the transition onto TV”.
Can creative speak the language of media? With Daivid’s Barney Worfolk-Smith