To tell the truth, AI ad creators sound like wizards. Insert some lines, and press a button and boom, ads come. Here is what most brands fail to mention however: poor feeding of information into such tools does not only give you average outputs. They will give you blue balls and when you are not looking they will drain your budget in advertising, kill your conversions and destroy your brand.
This blog will go far down the rabbit hole of the true cost of bad inputs in AI ad makers, some exemplars, errors, and remedies. This then, is the reason why your AI generated ads are not going so well, so read on.
What Are Inputs of an AI Ad Generator?
Your input is data and what instructions you provide the AI to operate on. This improves the output with the quality of input.
The following are the requirements of most AI ad generators:
Awareness of the audience: Depending on the number of audience members, interests, online trends
- Personas: Who, what and why your customer types are
- Geography: culture specificities, languages, seasons, holidays
- Brand voice: Tone, values and personality
- Prompt framing: Text of a direct command to the AI
Unhealthy entries in each of these categories can detour your ad quality. It is the case whether you are using the AI ad generator, a premium AI ad maker, or, even AI video ad generator.
Bad inputs categories and their practical presence
Not every input is a source of equal outputs. Others are able to sink your campaigns even before launching them. What are the most frequent occurrence of bad inputs and what may go wrong? Let us examine them.
1. Unclear or General Audiences Information
To tell people to target millennials is to say sell to individuals with hair. It is too general. AI develops into some vanilla advertisement.
A skincare brand simply focuses on women aged 20-40 without giving specifications on skin types and specifications of interests. The result? Ads that no one will relate to. Vague targeting cannot be saved even by the best ai ad generator.
2. Wrong Persona is equals to Wrong Message
A B2B SaaS start up into a B2C persona. The AI came up with funny words and emojis to use by CFOs. That does not look good.
3. Geographic Mismatches
Writing in American tongue or something about seasonal American phrases to Indian viewers? Bid logs, relevance and conversions farewell. A localized prompt helps an AI image ad generator deliver the right vibe.
4. Badly Framed Prompts
Include details to your prompts, such as context, specifications, etc. One of them is as follows.
Bad: “Create an advertisement of our running shoes.”
Improved: “Create an eye catching 20 word advertisement on Facebook about our new running shoes, that will reach urban Bangalore professionals aged between 25-35.”
5. Obsolete /Bias Data
Customers lists that are out-dated or datasets that take a biased stand are likely to result in tone-deaf or even offensive advertisements.
6. Irregular Brand Voice
The inability to use one version of tools with the similar brand style guide leads to a disunified tone of voice and undermines the recognition.
The financial implication of the Bad Inputs
1. Wasted Ad Spend
Efforts to improve advertisement performance should not only evaluate the benefits of various advertisements but also to assess untraced advert spend in terms of strategy and productivity.
You end up paying to impress and click the AI ad that does not match or is dull. The high CPA/Low ROAS even off the finest AI ad generator.
2. Brand Damage
Images of stereotyped or biased advertisements are even worse than numbers they affect the trust. And to correct that is 10-fold more costly than done right first time.
3. Operational Overhead
You will also find yourself checking, correcting or rewriting AI ad proliferation. That counters the point of speed powered by AI.
4. Risks Legal & Compliance
Using someone else data without verifying their permission? You are setting yourself up to be fined and get into PR hell.
5. Opportunity Loss
Worst targeting implies that your best offer does not appear before your actual audience. The advertisement of your competitor takes instead.
Errors that Brands Usually Make on Inputs
- Triggering AI to be a three-clicks creative factory
- Having being more concerned with speed rather than evaluating clearly
- Not teaching teams to write on time
- Over reliance on generic tags on audiences
- Failing to test or read the drafts of AI ads
- Not taking into consideration cultural, emotional or moral filters
Industry Requirements of Audience Insight
The level of nuance in the various sectors varies. I will just give some samples:
| Industry | What Beats in Your Audience Insight | Bad Input Pitfall |
| Retail | Age, purchaser behavior, site | Trends data of the previous seasons or gaps |
| Finance | Desire to take risks, ambitions, age bracket | An excessive number of jargons, vague CTAs
Healthcare |
| Healthcare | Circumstances, Empathy level, trust | Unthinking words, intrusion of privacy |
| SaaS/Tech | triggersPain points, buying triggers, role | Too much features, no clarifications |
| Travel | Destination, purpose and culture | Loss of seasonal or culture context |
These inputs are going to be wrong regardless of whether you use free AI ad generator or the more advanced ai ad generator tools, in which case the result will be poor.
Prompt Framing: The Trademark Most Overlook
Just as phrasing prompts has been underrated by many marketers. Waiting until something already happened is no longer an option; (lack of) prompt engineering takes a direct effect on the scope of creativity, the diction and the topicality of the work.
Bad: “Come up with an advertisement of winter jackets.”
Good: “Produce a catchy Instagram title of Winter Jackets designed to be worn by teens living in Delhi, and make it provocative and less than 10 words.”
No matter how good your ai ad generators are, they will not work unless you know how to instruct the generators. Better inputs = Better outputs. Every time.
A Workable Guide to solving the input problem
The disease is bad inputs then the remedies are as follows. But these are not the mere recommendations; these are actual strategies that are employed by those teams to obtain better results in advertising.
1. Invest in the Research of the Audience
Conduct surveys, analyze, social listen and mine reviews to provide the AI with actual, fresh data. Your pain point on Amazon would be to review mining and find customer pain point to fill it directly into prompts.
2. Construct Template Prompts
Make timely libraries depending on the tone, channel, persona, and funnel stage. One version of retargeting ads in Instagram, another one of Google search copy targeting to cold traffic.
3. Educate Your Workers
Write to deadlines like copy writing. Train your content and advertisement teams.Have monthly prompt copy reviews, just as you would regular creative reviews.
4. Develop a Directive Brand Guide
Distribute it between tools and groups to have consistency of voice. Add tone dos/don ts, language of choice, and acceptable phraseology in your prompt templates.
5. Apply Feedback Loop
Have the performance data enhance future inputs. Refine as time goes on. In case the ads with humor are more successful, change the prospective prompts to reflect that.
Final Thoughts
The AI-based ad creator is as smart as you get. Intelligent feeds are not only pleasant to have but are a value multiplier.
Either you are trying to test an unrestricted AI ad generator or scale the campaigns on an unrestricted video and picture AI ad maker, just keep in mind: everything starts with your input.
Know your listeners. Write better impetus. Consonance your tone. Others will follow suit.
Since in the AI ad world, garbage in is not always garbage out. That is cash out.
