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- [00:00]
A
Hey there, it's Mike. Before we get started with today's podcast episode, I just want to let you know that Social Media Marketing World is literally just around the corner every year. Thousands of marketers gather this year in Anaheim to learn exactly what's working right now with marketing and with AI. Not what worked last year, actually, what works right now. They leave with strategies that they can implement immediately. And I want you to be there. I want you to be part of this special group so that you can get an edge in 2026, because, my friend, the world is going through radical change. And we're going to be talking about it in detail at Social Media Marketing World, taking place April 28th, 29th and 30th. And AI Business World, which is our AI sub conference, is included free with your Social Media Marketing World ticket. Make the decision right now to attend and let 2026 be your best year ever. Grab your tickets right now at social media marketing world.info. Welcome to the Social Media Marketing Podcast, helping you navigate the social media jungle. And now, here is your host, Michael Stelzner.
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B
Hello.
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A
Hello, Hello. Thank you so much for joining me for the Social Media Marketing podcast brought to you by Social Media Examiner. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner, and this is the podcast for marketers and business owners who want more exposure, more leads and more sales. Today, we're going to explore how to create ad creative leveraging AI. I'm going to be joined by Caleb Cruise. If you are creating ads and you're not yet leveraged AI images and AI video in your ads, you're going to learn a lot of amazing things today. Going to love today's episode. Also, if you're new to this show, be sure to follow us on whatever podcast you're listening on so you do not miss any of our future content. Let's now transition over to this week's interview with Caleb Cruz, helping you to simplify your social safari. Here is this week's expert guide. Today, I'm very excited to be joined by an AI ad strategist who specializes in AI creative. He's known online as Mr. Paid Social. He helps marketers and entrepreneurs improve their return on ad spend with AI ads. His membership is the AI ad alchemist, Caleb Cruz. Welcome to the show. How you doing today?
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B
Doing great. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Stoked to be here.
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A
Awesome. Well, tell us a little bit about your story. How in the world did you get into ad creative and ultimately into AI?
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B
So I've been working in, like, paid social advertising Space as a media buyer for last 12 years. The last six years I was working at a company called Fluent where I was overseeing their whole paid social arm. Had a team of like eight media buyers I was managing. We were spending quite a bit of money on, you know, Meta, TikTok, Snapchat, all social media platforms. And so a lot of what my role turned into towards the last couple years was like, how do I make my team as efficient as possible? So a lot of what I would be doing is building out automations, figuring out AI. At that point it was like 2022, 2023, there was no generative AI images or videos yet, or if they were, they were pretty terrible. So a lot of what I was focused at the time was mainly just leveraging things like ChatGPT for, you know, thinking of like new ad copy variations or brainstorming creative ideas or things like that, or you know, using tools for bulk ad creation or automating certain parts of the media buying cycle. So yeah, in 2023 I quit my job for a variety of reasons, but I was just like ready for something new and started making TikToks about everything that I learned over the last, at that point, 10 years about automation, figuring out AI along with everybody else. And then, yeah, I think about three months of doing that, kind of cracked the code on TikTok, started getting a following and it was clear to me, okay, well maybe content creation is kind of my little pocket here. I'm just going to keep going with that. It's clearly providing a business for me. So just leaned into that. And then in 2024, somebody posted a video on Twitter of like a woman talking about body odor and it went viral. And everyone was like talking about how it looked crazy real, but it was AI. And I saw that, saw that it was kind of going viral over Twitter. I made some videos about it on my TikTok. Those went viral, like 8 million views or something crazy. And then not long after that, the founder of that company who put the video out reached out to me to see if I wanted to collab on some content. So kind of a fun like, you know, content creator meets, you know, up and coming SaaS AD performance tool. So yeah, we, we started collabing on content. And fast forward to today. That company, they're called Arc Ads, they are one of my biggest partners. You know, we collaborate, they, they compensate me for creating content on my channels. And a lot of what I do for them is when a new model comes out, I get my hands in on the Tool. I use it through their platform on ARC ads. And I figure out like, how can advertisers be utilizing this technology for creating image ads, video ads, leveling up what they're doing already, but just layering in AI on top of it. And so a lot of my content on my channels is AI generative, content related.
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A
Love it. Okay, so you basically worked inside of a company for a while and you really mastered the paid acquisition side of things. And then you went and you created content all around your craft and how you did this. And then eventually, as I came on the scene, you started exploring how you could use AI creative, for lack of better words, to enhance the ads that, that you were creating. And before you know it, boom, all of a sudd. You now have this following. You've got your membership called the AI Ad Alchemist and you're basically teaching people all over the world how to do this stuff. Do I have that right?
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B
Yeah, that's a pretty good summary.
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A
So there's a lot of people that are listening right now that are definitely dabbling with ads on Instagram and Facebook and TikTok and all the different platforms. Why does ad creative, that is AI ad creative matter? Like talk to people a little bit about that?
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B
I think, you know, for one, there's a lot of folks out there that are scared of it and it makes sense. It's kind of like people aren't really sure exactly how they feel about it yet, but the reality is it's where things are headed. I mean, you look at Meta as an organization and their whole mission is to completely automate the media buying cycle with AI or like you can just put in your product URL, describe what your product is, give it a budget, and then it'll run and it will eventually create all these ad creatives without you even lifting a finger. They've moved already very close to that with their acquisition of Manus recently. If you haven't checked out Manus, it's a fully like agentic tool that like will do everything from like analyze your media, buying to generate creatives for you and all this stuff. So Meta as a platform is already moving significantly closer to integrating AI. So these third party tools that have popped up that are kind of like ahead of that curve, you know, there's already a lot of DTC advertisers, a lot of media buyers that are leveraging this technology today. And it's kind of, it's something that you're going to have to learn like regardless of how you feel about it and if you wait, then you're going to have to play catch up with the people that have already figured it out.
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A
Does it actually help with conversions, I guess is one of the big questions, like what is the upside? What are some of the benefits that you're seeing and, or your students are seeing or that your clients are seeing as a result of leveraging AI creative?
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B
Yeah, I mean, I think speaking broadly to like people in my school community, people that I go on consulting calls with, you know, to looking at just like the user base of ARC ads as like a reference point as well. Like there are absolutely advertisers having tremendous success with AI advertising, like great return on ad spend. But like I would say the larger impact there is actually from one time saved. So you don't have to have the traditional back and forth. With a real UGC content creator, that can take weeks or months depending on, you know, how responsive that person is. You can get, you know, a hundred videos done in the time it might take you to get one final video done from a real UGC creator. The cost per video, like per finished product is usually much less than if you're going and trying to hire like a content creator like me or, you know, just an average person to demonstrate your product. Yeah, it overall is just like, it's saving people time, it's letting them expand on how much creative they can put together. And then thirdly, when you think through where the platforms are headed as well with the Andromeda update and like creative diversity and feeding more and more creative into these platforms, AI allows you to do that at scale much more efficiently where you can have maybe the same script that's generated by like eight different Personas in different settings that hit your target demographic in different pockets that then the system can then kind of like find those users based off of your creative signals.
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A
Love it. Okay, we're going to get into how to do this in a little while, but first, what do we need to be thinking about? What are some of the either mindset shifts or groundwork that we need to process before we actually begin using AI to create ads?
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B
I mean, I touched on it earlier, but you know, there is kind of the brand safety tolerance that you kind of have to figure out for your own business, like how comfortable are you having an AI generated person in your ads or like holding your products or like, you know, having an AI generated image because there are some brand, you know, risks associated with that. I think there's, that's probably like the biggest barrier for mass adoption at this Point is people that don't want to look deceptive to their audience.
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A
Well, let's talk about that for a second. Like, what are the risks? Or at least what are you hearing from other people that they believe are the risks when you are using a AI generated image or an AI generated video of a person effectively representing your product? Like, let's talk about that a little bit.
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B
Yeah, I think the risks are, and it varies very much depending on product, depending on industry. But like, there are some products, I would say, that maybe are a little bit more sensitive to this type of thing than others. Like if you're doing maybe lead gen and it's like, you know, something like solar installs or something that's just like there's not really a lot of brand safety issues there. You're not really worried about someone seeing that, oh yeah, this person on a roof installing solar panels is AI generated. Like, it's not as big of a issue there. But when you compare that to like maybe a women's apparel brand where, you know, you have an AI avatar wearing their leggings or a dress or whatever, and there's a certain body type associated with it, like, those are, I think, are the, the brands that have higher issue with this technology and I think makes sense because you want to have accurate representation of how a product looks on an actual person. So that's where I see, I think the biggest line in the sand at this point is like, mainly more like apparel or like, you know, skincare, like any of these kinds of brands that are a little bit more specific to like how an actual person uses it.
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A
Got it. What else? What other things do we need to be thinking about other than what you just talked about?
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B
Well, there's definitely, you know, some legality things to consider. Right? There's. The FTC has some pretty clear guidance around the usage of AI creative in advertising. People freak out about this a little bit more than I think they. They need to. Because the reality is the, the AI guidance is pretty much the exact same as it. You're the guidance they give you for like a real, like a UGC creator. Like, you can't give them a fake testimony for them to say. Like a real person saying a fake testimony is the exact same as an AI person saying a fake testimony. So that's like not allowed on either fronts. But there are ways to do it cleanly, one of which is kind of taking out a lot of the language. So rather than writing a script that's like, I put on this acne treatment and My skin cleared up the next day saying something like this acne cleanser is 30% more effective than the leading competitor, like kind of taking away the first person. But maybe it's just being presented by an avatar that looks and feels like your target audience.
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A
What about on the platform front? Obviously, two of the biggest players in the online world, Google and Meta, have massive AI investments that they've made. Are they okay with the ads being made by AI?
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B
Absolutely. They have their own generative AI in the platform already. They have image generators, they even have like video generators now. I think they, I might not be 100 accurate this, but I think they've even partnered with like Google VO3 or, or Sora 2 at this point, like to level up their own AI architecture there. Also, like the Manus acquisition, TikTok's parent company, ByteDance.
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A
Yeah, ByteDance also has their own AI models now too, right?
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B
Yep. And they are one of the best models out there. So every major advertising platform is kind of integrating AI, generative AI directly into their platform. So I have not heard of a single person who got creative flagged or an ad account disapproved or anything like that from using AI images or videos at this point. I think if, like this, it's like the same rules apply though. It's like you can't make an AI video of somebody saying, like, you're gonna, you know, lose a hundred pounds tomorrow if you, you know, take the supplement. Like the generic advertising rules still apply regardless of if it's AI or not. So that's still going to get you in trouble.
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A
Love it. Okay, last question and we'll get into the house side of this. Do you believe that this is going to become the standard here pretty soon where most creative is going to be either enhanced by AI or wholesale created by AI?
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B
I do. I strongly believe that's where we're headed. I think there will always be a place for like, real content. I think it'll probably become more valuable as like the mass adoption of AI content kind of takes over. So I don't think that's going to be completely gone by any means, but I do think the platforms are trying to make it as easy as possible for some small business who's got an online store to just like create an account, click a few buttons, get some creatives going, and then off they go. So, yeah, I do very strongly think that the future is, is going to be like AI generated with these static images and video creatives.
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A
I love it. Okay, folks, so if you have not invested in ads because you a don't have access to an incredible videographer or photographer or graphic designer. I think what Caleb is effectively alluding to is those days are rapidly declining. You have an opportunity here to really create incredible high quality ads that you could put across the social platforms at a very economical rate. So that is kind of gone now. So now I'm really excited about, like, let's dig in. Where do we actually start when it comes to AI and ad creative?
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B
Yeah, I mean typically people get started with images first. It's much more, I would say, accessible. You know, in the last six months we have models like Nano Banana, NanoBano 2 just came out either last week or the week before. So these models, you know, essentially are now not just image generation, but also image editing. So you can prompt your way into really any creative that you want. I just built like a template that allows users like see an ad in the wild, like on their, on their feed or something. Screenshot it, throw it into this tool and it will like clone it, like replace your product into that image with your brand, colors and all that stuff. Those tools have existed for a while, but it's definitely like gotten a lot better where it'll even maintain the fonts. The text on the products has gotten extremely good at this point too. Or like historically you might try and throw your product into an AI image, but somewhere in the, in the process the text on the product gets all warped or like replaced with different words. But that's gotten significantly better recently. And what's, what's crazy about all this is like, it's like literally like in the last two weeks it's gotten better. So this is getting better. Literally every week, every month there's a new model coming out. It's kind of like the space race but for generative AI because you know, Google makes an update to their image model and then OpenAI makes an update to their image model and then you know, the ByteDance does and all these other like everyone's kind of just like constantly leapfrogging each other. So it's kind of a, it's an insane, it's an insane time. Like I, I'm in this constantly and I'm constant overwhelmed as well.
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A
And folks, if you don't know what nano Banana is and it sounds a little crazy, well, this is the model that comes with Google Gemini. So if you already have Google Gemini on your workspace account for your company, this is included for free. Nano Banana 2 is like their Flash model. It's faster than they've got Nano Banana Pro, which is the model that you have to use their more advanced Gemini Pro model for. But it's, it's pretty phenomenal. So let's kind of talk about like how we can actually use images inside of ads. Like, let's just go through some scenarios because there's a, there's a lot of things that you can do that maybe people haven't even thought processed yet.
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B
Yeah, I mean there's the traditional, I would say like more polished ads. Like you go to ads library, you look at your competitors, you go to any of these other like ad spying tools out there. They have like libraries of ad creative. You know, some of them are like foreplay, co creative, os, Atria, make blanking on the other one.
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A
Well, the Facebook Marketplace is. Wait, no, not marketplace, Facebook Library. Right. Isn't that what it's called?
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B
Yeah, Facebook Ads Library. Yeah. So that's a, that's a free resource anybody can go to. They can put in the name of the brand they want to see the ads for. And they actually recently made a huge update to that where you can see like impression count, like not the actual impression count, but it'll tell you like high impression, low impressions. So you can get a gauge of how good these ads actually are. So like the first method I would say is like using AI image generation for like the more polished looking ads. Ads that look like ads. There's kind of the basic templates out there. There's the us versus them ads, there's the product feature, call out ads. There's all these kind of like, you know, in the D2C community ads that you kind of see every brand using. And Nano Banana and other models have gotten extremely good at just reproducing those with a new product or a new person or a new setting or a different f. Whatever element that you're wanting to change. The second is what I call, and this term I'm borrowing from Barry Hot, who's kind of like the ugly ads Godfather or whatever you want to call him in the community. So he calls these ugly ads where it's an ad that's meant not to look like an ad. It doesn't immediately show up in your feed and make you think, oh, that's an ad. It might be something where, you know, I take my phone and I hold my product in whatever setting that feels the most natural to me on social media and I take a picture or you know, I'm using the fonts like from Instagram or from Snapchat or from TikTok. So it looks and feels something that would just like blend in to the feed. This is something that I also call chameleon ads because they're meant to like, basically take the shape of what people are used to seeing on their feeds. That's another type of ad that you can create using AI, which, like, that is something that I've been waiting for for a long time because that's my primary use case for image ads. Like, I mostly make these like, ugly ads versus, like the polished ads because I think they perform much better. But AI, up until recently hasn't been able to get that right because you might prompt like a selfie style photo of somebody holding a product, but they have got like six fingers. But like, you know, now all that's gone. Like you can actually make image ads that look extremely realistic and native to the platform.
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A
Love it. What about people? What about generating people inside of ads?
- [21:19]
B
Yeah, so generating people super, super easy. Now, there's a couple ways you can do it. One is just like expl, like describing what your character, what you want them to look like. What I like to do is kind of create almost like a mood board of that character. And this is how you get character consistency locked in pretty good, is you can create like eight different shots of your, your subject with like multiple different angles. And then you can use those shots as your references for the next phase, which is like putting them into an environment or having them hold your product or changing the angle or whatever you're trying to do. So like, the first step is like locking in that character with multiple different angles and lighting and all that good stuff. And a way that you can even do that is like, sometimes what I'll do and what I've seen other people do as well is maybe they see some viral video or something and they like really like the vibe of the person that is in the viral video. And so all they have to do is basically take a screenshot of that person and then kind of reverse engineer it a little bit. So you can, you can throw it into Gemini and say, like, write me a prompt to create a person that looks very similar to this. So that way you're not just like copying someone, you know, because that's illegal. You can't just like take someone's likeness, use it in your ads, but you can just like use that person as a reference to like, recreate them and recreate their vibe.
- [22:47]
A
That's really cool. So this is the idea of like kind of a reference image, right? Is that really what we're talking about. So you could take any picture of any thing or person or place or whatever. Right. And then you could upload it into Gemini and you could. What I'm hearing you say is ask it to describe in detail something inside of it. Right. Like the setting or the person. And then you take that and then you start experimenting with generating a new person that looks slightly different. Right. Could be going from a female to a male, or it could be going from an older person to a younger person. I would imagine you could experiment with that quite a bit, huh?
- [23:25]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And that's, that's where you get really a lot of the power of this is like, I've started out with like a core person and then I've, I've prompted. Okay, I want to have like a 20 year old version, a 25 year old version, a 30 year old version, a 30, like, like 5 year increments, all the way up to like 65. And then all of a sudden you've got somebody or like the, the vibe of somebody like in every kind of stage of life that now you can then use in your advertising to kind of like hit all those different pockets of users and like be more relevant to them.
- [23:57]
A
You've been hearing me talk about social media marketing world taking place at the end of April, and I know you might not be able to travel, you might not have the budget, but here's the good news. We have an incredible option called a virtual ticket. You can experience all the great content directly from the comfort of your favorite chair. This includes all the sessions, all the keynotes, and even the workshops are included. All from the comfort of that place that you love to hang out. Your office or your home or your couch. And here's the good news. You can watch the live stream of all the sessions and all the keynotes and you get all the recordings of everything for a full 18 months. So why not experience social media marketing world for yourself today? Grab social media marketing world virtual tickets by visiting socialmediamarketingworld.info you'll thank yourself for sure. Do you have any tips on how to prompt these tools to get what you want? Because obviously this is a big part of it, right? You don't just say, create an image of a person that looks like this. Any guidance on how to do that?
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B
Yeah, my opinion is that a lot of folks out there overcomplicate prompting and like prompt engineering. I'm in this stuff all day, every day, and I don't think I've ever written like a Full prompt from scratch. There's ways to just use AI to prompt for you. So what I'll usually do, if there's like a new model that comes out, like, let's say Nano Banana two inside of Gemini just releases, right. If I go to Google and I search, okay, Nano Banana two prompting references or prompting guideline, or there's like a structure basically that they release on, like, the best way to prompt this new model.
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A
Oh, and generally the models come out with something is what you're saying. They're. They're generally okay, from the source.
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B
Okay, got it from the source. They'll usually provide, like, an actual document of, like, include this language here, include this structure. Include. Here's all of the different ways that you can prompt it. Like, all the keywords that you can use, all that good stuff. And so what I'll take, I'll do is I'll take that guide and I'll throw that into ChatGPT or Claude or Gemini, whatever model you're using, and say, you know, using this reference image, help me put together the perfect prompt for creating whatever it is that you want to create. And then nine times out of 10, it will spit out, like, a prompt that, like, has all the right keywords, is formatted the right way. It might even be formatted in, like, JSON format, which is like a coding language which, you know, you might have seen people out and about kind of talking about JSON prompting with images and how it's better we could go into that. But anyway, you can get kind of the end prompt pretty simply just by talking with AI and having it help you out.
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A
I use CLAUDE all the time, but what's your preferred tool for this kind of coming up with, for lack of better words, a prompt template for yourself almost where you can just substitute the stuff in and out.
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B
Yeah, I mean, historically I've used ChatGPT but as like, a custom GPT. So those are, I think, artifacts. And Claude. I also use Claude, but I have most of my custom GPTs already, like in the ChatGPT OpenAI ecosystem. But, yeah, what I'll usually do is I'll create, like, a custom GPT or, like, our artifact that has the instructions already in the context. So all I have to do is open it, and that's like, where I always go.
- [27:26]
A
Got it.
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B
For generating new prompts. There's also, like, using tools like airtable, like, they now have AI agent columns. So, like, I put together some templates inside of airtable where, like, it kind of helps me build the prompt out based off of whatever I select in the table, which is also a super easy way to do it.
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A
Love it. For folks that are using different tools, custom GPTs in cloud are called projects, which are effectively the same thing. And then in Google they call them gems. But I really like the idea of going out there and finding the instruction set and creating a custom set of instructions. And it's effectively kind of a resource where you could just drop in an image, tell it what you want, and then it will output presumably a better prompt that I would imagine you could just take directly into Nano Banana Pro, if that's your final source, and then just take the new image. I mean, you don't even need the original image anymore, right? You're just ultimately taking a prompt, right?
- [28:23]
B
Yeah, yeah.
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A
It's crazy. Okay, so video, let's get into video here because that, that is a whole nother ball of wax and I'm sure there's a direct relationship between the images and the video. But before we go there, one of the big things that I've noticed with a lot of these image generators is they don't output super high resolution images. Are you finding that that is getting better? Because, for example, a lot of the text looks a little rasterized on a lot of this image stuff. Is there a way around that? Have you figured out how to solve for that?
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B
Well, I mean, nano banana 2, which just recently launched, they output in 4K resolution.
- [28:59]
A
Now do you have to tell it to output in 4K?
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B
So if you're using it in Gemini, it's a little different than if you're using it through the API. So the Gemini, you're doing chatbot kind of thing. There's, there's, there's multiple ways to access these models and they all kind of are a little bit different. So Accessing Nano Banana 2 or Pro through like the Gemini chat, it's going to give you slightly worse outputs than if you're going directly to the API through like their like a third party tool. Either third party tool or like Gemini has, like if you just Googled like Gemini API Workplace. I can't remember the exact terminology, but
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A
is it AI Studio, is that what you're talking about? Or is this.
- [29:41]
B
Yes, thank you, AI Studio. Exactly.
- [29:42]
A
Okay, so that's important, folks. AI Studio is a free tool for developers, but you don't have to be a developer. So what you're saying is you can actually generate these images directly out of a studio and they're going to be much higher resolution?
- [29:52]
B
Yes, exactly.
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A
Ooh, that's really important. Okay, cool. I did not know that.
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B
And then there's also all of the third parties that have it. Like ARC ads, Freepik, Hicksfield, all of the, like, big kind of like AI aggregator tools out there. They also have, like, the direct connection with the API and you can get all those additional features from them.
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A
Love it. Okay, let's transition into video. What do we need to know?
- [30:16]
B
So with video, the way it's done, I would say with like, almost every workflow right now is you start out with your generating your reference images. So we kind of already covered getting those images created. But let's say you're wanting to make like, an unboxing video of your product of somebody, like, getting it in the mail. And maybe you have multiple scenes where, like, you know, you want a shot of them opening or, like, picking the box up off of the front porch, taking it to their kitchen table, opening it up, taking the product out, maybe even trying it on all those different scenes. Basically you would prompt an image of as like, the starting reference point, and then you would take that image once it's created and then build out the entire video kind of like piece by piece. And this is typically, I would say, how most people are doing it with models like VO3 or cling, where you throw in your reference image. You say exactly what you want to have happen. If there's any dialogue, if there's any sound effects, like the sound of the door opening or some crinkling of the paper, or any of the things that you want to include to make it feel as, like, real as possible. And then typically what's done is after you download all of these videos, and then you go into something like cap cut or final cut or whatever, and then you just kind of piece it all together. That's for the last, like, six months, I would say the primary kind of workflow that people are are using right now, which is like, scene by scene, piece by piece. There are models now that are coming out that allow multiple scenes per video. So, like cling 3.0, as an example. Now you can say, scene one, girl opens front door. Scene two, she takes the box and puts it on kitchen table. Scene three, it'll actually put a multiple sequence video together in one video for you, which is pretty crazy. There's also models like Sora 2, Sora 2 Pro, and that is owned by OpenAI. With that, you can be like, very even just vague. Like, you can say, like, I want a cinematic video of someone holding my product. And it will just do it. It'll just like, right, it'll write the script, it'll put together all the clips for you. It'll put music on it if you want it, a voiceover. It'll literally put together like a packaged, fully legit ad for you. And that's, I would say, like, Sora 2 is like the easiest model to work with if you're looking just to get something that's like, I just want a final version. The trade off is you don't have as much control over that final output. So a lot of like, I would say the pros are using models like cling or VO3, because you can get really specific with the prompting to get, like, the exact thing you want from that. But then a model like Sora 2, you can be a little bit more vague, a little less descriptive. You can still include the reference images. So you can give it your product, you can give it a setting, you can do all that stuff, but then it'll just kind of run with it.
- [33:16]
A
We're going to get into some of this. I want to talk a little bit about AI actors a little bit, because we've already talked about how you can have a reference shot that you could have created with AI, but to actually, like, have the. The voice and the movement and the face and all that kind of stuff. How does that actually happen? Because give us a little insights. Is this completely automated now or do you have to do some magic sauce stuff behind the scenes to make all this work?
- [33:45]
B
So historically, you would have had to, like, create the animated video of the actor, generate the audio in something like 11 labs, and then combine it all together in post. That's definitely, like, super far gone. We're at the point now where, yeah, you just say what you want and it'll give you the avatar speaking fully, lip synced, fully animated, exactly how you want. And it looks really good now.
- [34:14]
A
Interesting. And could it be your voice or somebody else's voice? Really? Okay. Wow.
- [34:20]
B
So ARC ads, as example, they have a feature right in their platform where you can just like click a button to replace the voice. So you can still generate the video from VO3 or Sora or cling, and then you can actually connect your 11Labs account into their platform. And then in 11Labs, you can clone your voice so you can upload like two hours of audio. I've done this with my voice where, like, I uploaded like a couple long YouTube videos, maybe a podcast episode like this. And then basically 11 labs, like, clones your voice, like, pretty perfectly. And then you can Just literally replace it onto whatever you want. So there's lots of cool ways to do that. Now I think the models are also adding some of this stuff natively coming too, where you can kind of like, save some of this stuff.
- [35:17]
A
That's really cool, folks. For those of you that don't know it, I have another show called AI Explored and episode 94, which was February 24th. I had a gal named Eve Whitaker who is a Hollywood producer, and she specifically talked about the VO3 stuff that Caleb was talking about, not VO3. I'm sorry, Sora. Sora too. And Sora is OpenAI's video model. But what's great about it is they understand the story arc and you don't have to really have that part figured out. And it just kind of does the full arc of the story and it allows you obviously to place yourself into it and train up your own model of yourself and all that kind of fun stuff. So. All right, talk to me a little bit about cling, because I've heard a lot about cling, and I just recently interviewed someone earlier today specifically on cling, but kind of explain to everybody what cling is, and then we'll. We'll zoom in a little bit more on VO3, and then we'll also talk a little bit about arc ads and all that stuff, because I want people to kind of understand, like, these things and kind of what they do and what the pros and cons are.
- [36:14]
B
Cling. So they're a Chinese model. They recently came out with an updated version, cling 3.0. And some of the biggest changes here are, I would say the biggest one is that, like, scene by scene prompt that now you can do. So you can have multiple, like, I. I made like a mock podcast video. I gave it like a starting reference image of me. And another, I took a, like, a screenshot of like, the Joe Rogan podcast studio. And then I had Gemini insert me and like, another person into that studio, rebrand it. So I didn't say Joe Rogan or anything. And then I uploaded that, that, like, kind of studio into Clang as the reference image. And I said, okay, scene one, establishing shot. Show both people at the table. The host says, you know, whatever the dialogue you want. And then scene two, have it pan to a 45 degree angle, zoom in shot of the guest. And then like, basically I had it shot by shot, switch to whoever was talking at the time with, like, what you would expect to see from like a podcast episode. And it did perfectly.
- [37:25]
A
And you can't really tell, huh? That's crazy.
- [37:27]
B
Yeah.
- [37:28]
A
Is that your tool of choice generally for these kind of things, or do you use VO3 as well, or what's your thoughts on that?
- [37:33]
B
It's one of those things where I'm constantly bouncing around because there's always something new coming out. Right now, I would say I'm primarily doing cling and Sora too, for most things. I do leverage VO3 as well. But something I think that they need to work on is the. The way that their voices sound. I think they're a little. They're still a little robotic. Clings, like realism has gotten really, really good, especially for anything that's like user generated, like iPhone quality.
- [38:04]
A
Can we take older ads and kind of make them better? Is that even an option here? You know, can we take an ad that maybe performed really well that was not AI created and somehow, like, enhance it?
- [38:14]
B
Absolutely, yeah. I mean, there's people that will completely recreate one of their top performing ads with AI in similar kind of process. Like, if it's a image or a video, you can upload it to something like Gemini. Gemini is great for this because it can actually, like, watch your video and, like, give you feedback on it and, like, dissect it. But basically you can just have AI tear apart your ad for you and like, kind of put together new prompts to recreate it. And then you can just swap out things. Cling and I'm blanking on the other model, but they both have this ability to swap the main character.
- [38:52]
A
Okay.
- [38:52]
B
I could have an ad where I was the main subject and I could throw it into the tool and say, swap it out with this new reference image. And maybe it's like turning me into a female or turning me into, like an older version of myself or whatever. And then it'll literally, like, it'll put the new person and it will follow all of your movement. It'll follow your mouth. Like everything will be exactly locked in you. You might see a lot of content, like on Instagram or TikTok of people kind of showcasing this, where they'll be like sitting in front of the camera and then all of a sudden they're like a celebrity or they're like Mario or whatever. That's kind of the. The technology that's being used for that.
- [39:30]
A
Very interesting. What about sound effects and all the other things that you can potentially do to make, you know, these things perform a little bit better?
- [39:37]
B
A lot of models are also getting really, really good at incorporating sound effects directly. Like hard, like printed onto the Video that they give you. So Sora 2 super good at that. Like I had it. I was like create a, a fight sequence of me fighting like a monster or whatever. And then it's like it adds the like laser sound effects, the punching sound effects, the like music, the dramatic scene. Like can put something together that looks like it was like an avatar film and kind just do it. You know, you don't really have to even prompt it. There's also ways where you can prompt exactly what you want with some of these models, like you know, insert this sound at this time and all that good stuff. But yeah, and then you know, there's also the third party kind of like other way to do it, which you can go to something like 11 labs and you can, you can prompt any sound, any sound effect that you might want now where it's like if you want like a bicycle bell or if you want to, you know, someone ripping a cardboard box or whatever it is like you can just, just literally put that into something like 11 labs and then it just generates it for you.
- [40:39]
A
What about formats like 16 by 9 versus 9 by 16? You know, vertical, horizontal kind of stuff? Is it really good with that kind of stuff?
- [40:46]
B
Yeah, super good. And this is actually one of the biggest, I would say slept on use cases for advertisers specifically for or for images. It does video too, but images, it does this really, really well. I just did this in like this airtable template that I put together where as like the last step in my whole workflow I had to take the AI ad that I put together and then I have a column for each of the aspect ratios that I want. So like a 9 by 16 one by one and a 4 by 3 and then you just like click a button and it just automatically takes all the, like. It's able to basically like vectorize your entire ad and then just like put it square without it like squishing things or stretching things. Like it's not just like taking the image and like shrinking it, it's like actually rebuilding the image or add context too.
- [41:37]
A
If it's a 9 by 16, but it was filmed landscape, it'll add more of the real context above it, right?
- [41:42]
B
Yeah, exactly. So there's ways to do that. Yeah, for image and for video where you can kind of like take an asset you already have, throw it into the model, have it create the other dimensions that you need and then yeah, to your point, it'll even like fill in where there's, there's gaps for folks
- [41:58]
A
that have been Paying attention. You don't have to do this with ads. You could also do this with organic content. And I'm guessing Caleb, you are creating like reels and shorts and all that kind of stuff and TikToks probably to experiment with this stuff before you turn some of it into ads.
- [42:11]
B
Oh yeah, totally. A lot of the content I make is showing how to use these tools. So I'm using it in my organic content all the time. But what's been a really interesting subject and you could have, you should probably find somebody to interview as like a whole separate episode for this because I think this is really, really interesting. But there's AI channels now that are really popping up.
- [42:31]
A
It's like faceless video. But it's all AI is what you're saying, right?
- [42:35]
B
It's like beyond faceless video. It's like AI personalities. So like influencers that are not real. But like every video is that fake person. Like there's one Chloe versus history and like every reel is this girl, she's not real, she's AI. But it's like her in different like scenes throughout history like the Revolutionary War or Paris during the Black Plague or all these things and it's just like. Or like on the Titanic when it's sinking and it's like a minute long video and it actually is like really good and really entertaining. Like it's like not just AI slop. So I think it's really interesting to see on the organic side the way that people are using these tools to also just like get mass engagement. Like her videos have like 7 million views because people are entertained by it.
- [43:22]
A
That's crazy. Caleb, we have just scratched the surface of AI creative for ads. I know that there's going to be a lot of people that want to connect with you. Where's your preferred socials if they want to connect with you on the socials and if they're potentially interested in reaching out to you because they want to be part of your school or anything else you got going on. Where do you want to send them?
- [43:42]
B
Yeah, so you know, online my like Persona is like the Mr. Paid Social thing. So all of my channels are just at Mr. Paid Social. Some of I think on Instagram and TikTok it's like mister.com paid social and then on YouTube I'm one word, Mr. Paid Social. I'm also on LinkedIn and then yeah, I've got my private community on school. The AI Ad alchemists. Yeah, that's about it.
- [44:06]
A
Caleb, thank you so much for answering all my questions and sharing your wisdom and insights with this today was super insightful.
- [44:12]
B
Absolutely. Thank you for having me. It was super fun.
- [44:14]
A
Hey, if you missed anything, we took all the notes for you over@social mediaexaminer.com 713 if you're new to the show, be sure to follow us. If you've been a listener for a little while, we'd love a review. Also, do check out my other show, the AI Explored Podcast. This brings us to the end of the Social Media Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Michael Stelzner. I'll be back with you next week. I hope you make the best out of your day and may your marketing keep evolving. The Social Media Marketing Podcast is a production of Social Media Examiner. Hey, don't forget to get your tickets to Social Media Marketing World, whether they be physical tickets or virtual tickets, by visiting socialmediamarketingworld Info. It takes place at the end of April. Don't miss out SocialMediaMarketingWorld info.