AI makes a brand series affordable. Humans make it good
In Google's own case study, AI got one small brand more than 20 mascot clips in an afternoon at under a tenth of the usual cost, with people directing and checking every stage. The character, the cut and the trust stay human: over half of US consumers still distrust AI ads.
AI makes a brand series affordable. Humans make it good.
Start with the affordable part, because it is real. In Google's own case study of its Veo 3 video tool, The Wild Hare, a small UK brand of organic ready meals, wanted a story-led series for its mascot, Hector the Hare, but could not justify traditional animation. Its agency, No Biscuits, made more than 20 clips in a single afternoon, at less than 10% of the cost of one animated video from a traditional agency. That is a vendor telling its own success story, not independent research, but the wider market points the same way. In IAB's 2025 video ad report, 86% of video ad buyers said they use or plan to use generative AI to make video ads, and smaller brands are moving faster than the largest.
Now the good part, and it was human all the way through. Even in Google's showcase, people directed and checked every stage, and the hare's fur and hopping were the hardest parts to get right. Keeping a character the same from episode to episode, deciding what is funny, what stays in the cut, what the brand has the rights to and how the product really looks: those are human calls. Audiences can tell the difference. Kantar found more than half of US consumers feel uneasy or distrustful about AI-generated ads, and over 60% worry they could lead to fake or misleading ones.
For AI creators, that is the pitch. Sell the cost unlock and the cadence: a character-led series a brand can afford to keep going. Then sell the people: who shapes the character, who makes the cut, who signs off. AI pays for the episodes, and humans make them worth watching.
Sources: Think with Google, The Wild Hare case study (2025); IAB, 2025 Digital Video Ad Spend and Strategy report; Kantar, US Media Reactions 2025.
