AI-Powered Content & Ad Creation: Does It Work?

AI needs to be understood to level-up your PPC campaigns, rather than just experimented with as a buzzword of the modern internet. But does it actually work? Or is this just another trend in the ever-evolving world of modern day PPC?

In this article, we’ll dive into the details of AI powered ad creation and content generation. We’ll look into what’s possible, what works, and what you might consider keeping as a manual part of your strategy.

Ready to use AI with purpose? Read on to discover more:

• What is AI-powered content creation in PPC?
• How PPC platforms use AI to automate
• Crafting ad copy with AI: is it good enough?
• AI in creative generation for display & video assets
• Blending AI with human strategy: the smart way to use it
• Where AI fits in the PPC toolkit

What Is AI-powered content creation in PPC?

AI content creation in PPC refers to the use of machine learning tools to automate and optimise ad copy, headlines, visuals, and targeting.

It’s used to:

• Generate multiple versions of headlines and descriptions.

• Suggest or auto-create creative assets like banners or video thumbnails.

• Automatically adjust bids and budgeting decisions, and improve ads in real time based on performance data.

Tools range from built-in platform solutions (like Google Ads and Meta) to external content generators (like ChatGPT, Copy.ai and Jasper).

How PPC platforms use AI to automate

Within PPC specifically, many marketers are saving time and money, and discovering previously untapped audiences through informed choices to use AI where it counts. There’s no one-size-fits-all, here. It’s about understanding what is most useful for your marketing goals and individual campaigns.

Responsive Search Ads (RSAs)
Responsive Search Ads can be a great way to save time building out 100’s of ad variations. With RSA’s, Google uses AI to test combinations of headlines and descriptions to find what resonates with the most users.

It works by PPC marketers inputting multiple assets, which can be hand written by your marketing team. Then AI rotates them to find the best performing mix. Having more variations of your ads helps combat ad fatigue and increase CTR.

Performance Max (PMax) asset rotation
This goal-based, AI-powered campaign combines Search, Display, Video and Shopping into one campaign, using machine learning to deliver the most relevant asset. It’s one campaign that covers all bases, a first for PPC!

PPC marketers upload images, videos, headlines and descriptions. AI then decides when and where to show them. This allows your ads to have a broad reach, but limits your manual control and visibility over placements and combinations.

Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs)
Here, AI automatically generates headlines based on your website content and matches them to relevant search queries. Just copy the most useful URL and let AI do the rest.

This ad style is useful for large websites or inventory-heavy brands, where manually building out page-specific ads would take months. Of course, this comes with a balance; there is less control over your messaging and landing page alignment, so it’s worth running manual campaigns alongside it where you can be granular about your copywriting.

Automated bidding and targeting
Bidding strategies (e.g. maximise conversions and ROAS) rely on AI to adjust bids in real time. AI uses behavioural and contextual data to target the right user at the right time.

This supports the content by ensuring it reaches the most relevant audience, but the quality of the content itself is still a huge factor in what converts, and what just gets clicks, or is scrolled past entirely.

Crafting ad copy with AI: is it good enough?

With the pivotal role of copy in mind, let’s drill down into how you can elevate your writing with a little help from AI.

Where AI assists your copy
The most obvious benefit of AI-powered copy is speed. You’re crafting headlines and copy ideation at scale. Once you’ve inputted your reference URL’s, creative assets or copy examples, you get a quick generation of multiple variations.

Aside from finding what converts at speed, this also helps tackle ad fatigue by rotating fresh copy regularly, so users aren’t just fed the exact same copy, every time.

Tools in use
You’ll find AI tools built-in to your favourite PPC platforms, including Google Ads, Meta Ads, Pinterest Ads and more.

Outside of built-in options, there are plenty of hugely successful standalone AI programs, such as ChatGPT, Copy.ai, Jasper and other language models. These can write ad copy based on brand prompts, with additional features that you can’t find in the built-in options for PPC.

Alongside this comprehensive suite, you can also download AI-powered browser extensions and integrations that offer real-time content assistance within ad platforms.

Limitations
As useful as AI is for larger campaigns, some copywriting outputs lack nuance, context, or true persuasion. Without refinement or the required creative planning for any creative assets being used as examples to train your AI-powered copy, the results can be generic, repetitive or overly formal.

You’ll find that some AI software struggles with tone, especially if your brand voice is playful, niche or emotionally driven. AI copy has a go-to casual and mildly ironic tone of voice and humour that starts to sound very similar across the board once you’ve read just a handful of AI pieces of content.

Finally, as much as AI is touted as a time-saving tool, it still requires human editing to refine, fact-check and align and output with your campaign goals. It can be more time consuming to edit an AI piece vs working with an expert to create something bespoke from scratch.

AI in creative generation for display & video ads

The same level of personalisation, build-out and generation that applies to text ads can also be leveraged for your display and video ads, too. Similarly to search ad options, there’s a mix of PPC specific and non-PPC AI generation tools available online.

What AI can do
AI can generate display ad banners, social media visuals, and video content based on templates and your own input. You’ll often find tools like thumbnail generation and auto-captioning for your videos ready to go in several PPC and social media platforms.

Meta’s Advantage+ uses machine learning to adapt creative automatically, while Canva and Adobe tools offer AI-powered design suggestions and auto-resizing.

Third-party platforms
There are third-party platforms and software such as Superside, and Design Pickle offer AI-assisted creative testing and iteration. It’s useful for small teams or brands without in-house design, or can be used as a way of brainstorming options without having to manually create every single example ad.

Creative challenges
As with any AI-powered option, generated visuals can look generic, templated or stock-heavy. WIthout manual optimisation, inconsistencies in branding, fonts, colours and tone can make their way into your campaign.

At the end of the day, video generation tools still lag behind in the emotion and storytelling quality to be found from expert human teams. Users are wary of AI-generated content, so it’s vital to create quality, not just quantity.

Blending AI with human strategy: the smart way to use it

So how do you avoid these pitfalls? The answer lies in human intervention, and the strategic use of AI at just the right moments for your campaign.

AI as a sound-board for your ideas, not final author
A great way to use AI is to generate content drafts and ideas, but not your final approved copy or design. Bring in experts from your team to refine, contextualise and align your ads with your brand tone and campaign strategy. WIth this strategy, you’ve saved time in the initial planning stage, without compromising everything that a quality human team can bring.

Funnel context is critical
Something that isn’t talked about enough in AI discourse, is the fact that AI doesn’t understand the buyer journey phases like a PPC expert.

So, take the reins and plan your ads around specific stages, to differentiate between awareness vs consideration vs conversion-stage messaging.

Improve your output by breaking the chain
AI feeds off of itself to optimise future iterations of your ads, which is useful, until it starts picking up on the wrong elements. Monitor which AI-generated content performs best and build in manual elements of feedback and analysis to break the AI chain.

Your input based on this analysis will be invaluable to refine prompts and generate stronger ads moving forward.

The ultimate option for this strategy is to combine your AI campaign with a manual campaign alongside it, A/B testing to see what works best, and what you can learn from each.

Final thoughts: where AI fits in the PPC toolkit

Ultimately, AI is a powerful assistant, not a replacement for skilled strategists and copywriters.

It’s ideal for:

• Speeding up drafts

• Testing new variations

• Supporting campaign scale

And not ideal for:

• Final creative decisions

• Brand storytelling

• High-stakes copy

The best results come from AI-human collaboration, where each plays to its strength.

In closing

AI offers a wealth of new and optimised processes and tools to savvy PPC marketers. But AI for AI’s sake can eat your budget and take away from your previous manual successes. So, use it wisely. Consider how and where it will be the most efficient and relevant to your specific marketing goals.

Your PPC campaigns can be greatly improved through AI’s most useful features, including creating huge amounts of variations of your existing ads, real-time optimisation and content generation. If you take your time with using AI sensitively, your campaigns will be well placed to reap the benefits that AI has to offer.