Inside Channel 4’s drive to create AI ads
Feature
Channel 4 is launching generative-AI ads on behalf of brands as part of a wider effort to make TV a more accessible media channel for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
The broadcaster’s first two AI ads, available on streaming, have been created for Countryside Homes and Spirit Studios, specifically for its podcast Good, Bad & Healthy.
Spirit Studios’ ad, shared with The Media Leader, features a shopping cart slowly moving around different aisles in an empty supermarket to a Django Reinhardt-style guitar track. Towards the end of the spot, a PA system announcement features a voiceover from Good, Bad & Healthy host Sunna van Kampen promoting the show.
Channel 4’s move into developing a generative-AI ad proposition was reported earlier this summer by The Times. It follows efforts last autumn from ITV, which launched two AI-produced ads for Travel House and Sheepbridge Interiors.
Refining the process
Barry John, Channel 4’s head of sales operations, tells The Media Leader that the broadcaster’s foray into AI ads began 16-18 months ago amid wider discussions about what it could do to simplify the TV buying process.
“There are several parts of buying TV that are complicated — more complicated perhaps than social platforms,” he says. “We felt that by addressing the creative process — making that cheaper and simpler and faster — we could help people who traditionally may have shied away from talking to us about advertising because of barriers to entry.”
Channel 4 has taken nearly a year longer than ITV to debut these ads, with John pointing to a desire, in line with the broadcaster’s ethics policy, to take time to “make sure we are doing this right”.
“It took us a little while to choose our partner[s] and understand the approach we would take,” he admits.
The cautious approach has similarly been applied to the beta test. Apart from Spirit Studios and Countryside Homes, Channel 4 has “deliberately not engaged with others because we want to refine the process”.
He continues: “We’ve got a pipeline of advertisers that we’ve spoken to that are interested, but we’ve held them at arm’s length for now because we don’t want to either over-promise or under-deliver.”
Two options for advertisers
To provide generative-AI creative services to advertisers, Channel 4 has partnered two video-generation companies: Streamr.ai and Telana.
The former has developed tools targeted at new-to-TV brands with “slightly less budget to spend” on the creative process, while the latter is meant for medium-sized advertisers that can afford to take a more hands-on approach with creative development.
For example, Telana is able to streamline the process of storyboarding, whereas Streamr.ai can automatically generate spots for brands using their assets.
According to John, the Streamr.ai solution works best for brands that have relatively simple goals for their campaign and the messaging they want to land. It can also be used by Channel 4 as a lead generator when approaching new-to-TV advertisers.
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“The approach in beta has been review, refine, go again,” he explains.
Feedback from Countryside Homes and Spirit Studios has been positive. While both expressed that if the ads were “going to look crap” they wouldn’t be interested, they were largely happy with the visual result, with feedback centred primarily around tweaking copy and overall messaging.
“It’s human-led, but supported by AI doing the heavy lifting around creation,” says John. “It’s not to replace humans. Aligned with the Channel 4 ethics policy, we’re very much making sure the tools are serving us and what we’re trying to achieve.”
Quality assurance top of mind
Ensuring ad quality is “very foremost in our minds”, according to John. He acknowledges that many in the industry have been made uneasy by the proliferation of so-called AI slop on social platforms, as well as the response to earlier efforts to use AI for TV ads.
Those initiatives, says John, got themselves into trouble by producing ads that elicited an “icky feeling”.
As it was developing its AI strategy, Channel 4’s in-house agency 4Creative trialled the technology to create promotions for its own programming. The result was “on the edge” of that “icky” sentiment, John notes.
To avoid such a pitfall, Channel 4 will only use AI to develop and create simple messages, such as that in the Spirit Studios ad. It is “too aspirational”, with current technology, to think this type of AI product will “solve all your marketing needs”.
Apart from its own standards for quality, Channel 4 is working closely with Clearcast to ensure the approval process is smooth. Clearcast rules are fed into the AI models, helping to reduce the likelihood that the final ad would, for example, make false claims or have audio that is too loud or supertext that is the wrong size.
For new-to-TV advertisers, many of which are likely unaware of all of Clearcast’s rules, the effort should help streamline the clearance process substantially.
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Opportunities for DCO
John’s ambition is that, by this time next year, Channel 4 will have automated much of the process behind TV advertising to create new opportunities for clients.
One key aim, he explains, is to bring dynamic creative optimisation more seamlessly to TV ads. Using AI, Channel 4 could help develop several versions that can be used to target different demographics, for instance.
“Automating that workflow means we will then start to see more granular advertising, with more targeting opportunities and more tailored creative,” he adds.
Generative AI could help more efficiently tailor the end-point of ads. For example, AI could augment creative in a car ad to ensure the driver is on the correct side of the vehicle and finance options are customised for different markets.
While the initiative is not targeted at larger advertisers, Channel 4 hopes that by 2026 it will be able to work with 20-30 brands per month.
Bigger puzzle
Channel 4’s move is just one part of a wider strategy to make every step of the TV advertising process simpler and more accessible.
Since the start of the year, UK broadcasters have set out to grow the TV pie by going after FELT (“fat end of the long tail”) brands, collaborating in unprecedented ways to do so.
At Cannes, Channel 4, ITV and Sky announced they had partnered Comcast to create a new UK marketplace for SMEs to buy TV ads like they would on social platforms. They are also developing a measurement methodology, dubbed Lantern, aimed at assessing business outcomes.
Between AI creative tools, a simpler buying process and a new measurement framework, “we’ve got a three-legged stool for an SME to be able to buy”, says John.
“We’re competing with social platforms in a way that marketers have come to expect,” he insists. “They can log in and buy […] we will do the automation of the creative, submission and approval process for them, and then we will do the measurement at the end.
“Creating creative in its own right isn’t enough, we don’t think. It’s one part of the puzzle.”