In today’s highly competitive marketing field, AI technology is changing the landscape of advertising creation and delivery at an unprecedented rate. This article will give you an in-depth understanding of how AI advertising can achieve $5 million in revenue in just 30 days, and how $1 AI advertising is exploding the entire marketing industry with its efficient and low-cost advantages.
To say that the most successful field of AI commercialization is advertising.
Relying on the application of AI advertising, Keling’s monthly payment amount has exceeded 100 million yuan for two consecutive months; Icon, created by Columbia University dropout genius Kennan, also achieved ARR (annual recurring revenue) from 0 to $5 million in just 30 days; Arcads AI also relied on a team of 5 people to achieve an ARR of $5 million.
Behind the amazing commercialization data is the reconstruction of advertising production costs by AI.
In the past, the cost of creating and running an ad was often as high as $200. AI has changed all this, taking Icon as an example, it can complete the whole process of planning, production to delivery in one stop, and the average advertising cost is less than $1.
In other words, AI has reduced the cost of ad production by 99%.
Thanks to the upgrade of efficiency, capital also flocked to it. In just half a year, there have been a number of financing acquisitions in the field of ad generation:
- In May 2025, AI unicorn PhotoRoom acquired automated visual marketing tool GenerateBanners, which completed a Series B financing of $43 million in 2024;
- In February 2025, the listed company Appier acquired AI advertising company AdCreative.ai for $38.7 million;
- At the beginning of 2025, AI-generated advertising Icon.com received financing from top investments such as Founders Fund;
- In December 2024, LoopMe, a British AI advertising company, acquired mobile advertising platform Chartboost;
- Recently, AI video advertising company Arcads AI is negotiating financing with top venture capitalists such as Sequoia and a16z.
Today, Crow Jun will take you to see the opportunities in the AI ad generation market.
01 minute of creativity, hour delivery
If traditional advertising has thousands of faces, and Internet advertising has thousands of faces, then advertising in the AI era can really achieve “one person and a thousand faces” advertising.
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The core of AI generative advertising products is to use AI technology to batch create advertising creatives and automate delivery, and automated workflows to gradually replace traditional creative processes. The product is suitable for:
- E-commerce sellers: quickly create product main images and adapt to platforms such as Amazon;
- Content creators: designing social media covers, event posters;
- Small and medium-sized enterprises: low-cost generation of professional-level publicity materials;
- Brand: Integrate user UGC content through API.
The world’s martial arts are only fast and unbreakable.
In the face of massive publicity demand, AI generative advertising uses algorithms to replace manual repetitive labor, which is more multi-dimensional than traditional advertising in terms of “fast”.
For the first time, it is extremely fast production, and AI turns creative production efficiency into “minute-level output”. It is mainly divided into two parts:
(1) Fool-like operation, template and parametric generation
AI tools such as AdCreative.ai and Photoroom have built-in massive templates, and brands only need to enter product images, selling point copy, and target audience tags, such as “young women, beauty and skin care”, and AI can generate hundreds of advertising images in different styles within 10-30 minutes to adapt to scenarios such as e-commerce detail pages.
▲ Template example of AdCreative.ai
(2) Content “breeding”, dynamic content generation and batch expansion
The product uses AI to disassemble the script structure (such as the opening selling point, intermediate usage scene, and ending promotional message), automatically replace the shots, background music, and subtitles in the material library, and present a set of logic in thousands of ways, and complete the amount of material that traditional teams need to complete in weeks within a few hours.
▲ Icon supports “generating thousands of video ads with one click”
This rapid prototyping not only significantly reduces the time from concept to finished product but also allows teams to test and optimize their creative ideas before investing significant resources.
The second is fast response speed and real-time optimization.
Since the traditional placement is after advertising production, it is difficult for the traditional process to capture the traffic dividend. AI generative advertising can be “iterated in real time”, which requires two steps: (1) guess preferences and optimize ads every day; (2) Grab hot spots and quickly adapt the scene.
AI advertising optimization has natural advantages, and no one understands users better than ChatGPT, even the users themselves.
The third is “one upload, multi-terminal generation”.
After inputting the main material into the AI product, the AI automatically generates the corresponding size (such as Douyin vertical screen video, horizontal poster in the circle of friends, and square icon in the mini program) according to the rules of each platform, and intelligently adjusts the content.
For example, VidAU AI’s AI Video Admaker can generate video ads in different styles with one click according to the platform’s tone. For example, short videos with a bright rhythm and full of trendy elements are generated for TikTok, and long videos explaining in detail are generated for YouTube.
Fourth, low input, high output, and fast benefits.
AI generative advertising has the advantage of low cost and fast verification. AI tools are charged for usage, such as hundreds of dollars per year, such as AdCreative.ai year, allowing brands to test a large number of ideas at a low cost. Users quickly generate explosive advertisements through AI, shortening the cycle from investment to profitability and achieving a quick return on investment.
02 Single ad from $1? What is the style of play of each family
In the AI-generated advertising market, the core functions of many start-ups have a high degree of overlap, such as AI image generation and copywriting generation, and the value of a single point tool is low, but the business paths are different.
Arcads AI focuses on paid video advertising, WorkMagic provides product image automation services for small and medium-sized e-commerce companies such as Shopify, and Copy.ai covers the field of graphics, text, and video.
Now is the stage for industry players to integrate resources, expand scale, and improve efficiency and competitiveness through mergers and acquisitions. Through the acquisition, Photoroom strengthens its marketing automation capabilities, Appier enhances its AI creative capabilities, and LoopMe expands its mobile advertising capabilities.
Next, let’s take a closer look at these companies.
Icon: A single ad as low as $1 and reaches 5 million ARR in 30 days
AI advertising company Icon achieved ARR growth from 0 to $5 million in just 30 days. In the past, it often cost as much as $200 to create and run an ad, but with Icon, it cost less than $1 per ad.
It can complete the whole process of planning, production and delivery in one stop, and easily create thousands of popular advertisements. Its core product is “AI CMO”, which can automatically complete tasks such as advertising planning, creative generation, video editing, and user-generated content (UGC) production in a short period of time, focusing on scripting and video editing.
Specifically, Icon can mine 100 high-quality advertising ideas every day. By analyzing information such as your website, competitor websites, competitor ads, customer reviews, and ad account performance, you can generate various types of ads such as “deep content creation”.
Assuming a customer wants to run 100 ads per day, Icon analyzes millions of data points to create those 100 ads and divides them into three types:
- 20 is a parody of a competitor’s successful advertisement
- 50 are new advertising ideas derived from in-depth research
- 30 are optimizations for successful ads
Icon’s customers include brands with annual revenues of more than $100 million, such as Ridge, Jones Road, Immi, Backbone, and MUDWTR.
Arcads AI: Focusing on virtual character video advertising, 5 people can achieve $5 million ARR
Arcads AI’s business model is “Content as a Service” (CaaS), where customers only need to provide core copy to get the full advertising video content. This model is particularly suitable for e-commerce brands that need to test their creatives frequently, SMEs lacking a professional advertising team, and startups with limited budgets.
Its core product is Peeps, an AI ad creative generation platform that allows users to generate video ads featuring AI virtual actors in seconds by simply entering a script. The platform collaborates with gig platform Fiverr to obtain user authorization to record emoticons, movements, and voice materials, and train them into controllable AI characters for generating various advertising videos.
Additionally, Arcads AI collaborates with human content creators to obtain licensed recording materials through the gig platform Fiverr and train them into controllable AI characters for generating advertising videos.
This “synthetic character based on real persona” model strikes a good balance between advertising authenticity and controllability, ensuring the quality and originality of advertising content.
The company has developed multiple AI agents internally, such as AI Spy Agent, to monitor competing advertisements, automatically extract popular scripts and generate similar content; AI Ghostwriter writes ad copy, while AI Intern assists with other creative tasks.
The company achieved an ARR of $5 million with only a team of 5 people and plans to keep the team size to less than 10 people when it reaches an ARR of 100 million people.
Photoroom: AI image editing unicorn, with an annual income of $50 million and a valuation of $500 million
PhotoRoom is a French company founded in 2019 that is a star product in the field of image processing and has been named one of the most popular AI photo editors in the world by A16Z. It found its own PMF with the exploration of the single-point feature of background erasing.
As an application for vertical scenes, PhotoRoom has also begun to invest in model research and development. The model “Instant Diffusion” developed by it is based on computer vision algorithms, which can accurately identify the edge of the subject and process 40% faster than Midjourney. To achieve a more realistic image effect, PhotoRoom uses intelligent algorithms to match the light and shadow of the scene, which can make the generated picture more natural and realistic.
Automatic background removal is Photoroom’s signature feature, suitable for various scenarios such as e-commerce product display and ID photo production. In terms of image beautification, the platform provides a series of tools, such as color adjustment, contrast optimization, sharpening, etc., to make users’ images clearer and more beautiful.
In terms of batch processing, PhotoRoom also uses AI to its unique advantages. Optimize GPU source allocation through parallel computing, which can process thousands of images at a time and achieve batch image processing.
PhotoRoom started with IOS products and gradually covered Android mobile and web terminals. In terms of commercialization, it provides APIs for enterprise customers, and brands such as Warner Bros. and Netflix have achieved explosive marketing campaigns through their API services.
In 2025, PhotoRoom will have more than 150 million downloads, with more than 7 million monthly active users and more than 180 countries. The company has a team of about 50 people, with annual revenue of up to $50 million and a valuation of $500 million. PhotoRoom has estimated its ARR to reach $100 million in 2024.
AdCreative.ai: The all-rounder in AI advertising, managing $14 billion in ad spend in 2024
AdCreative.ai is a star company in the field of advertising creativity, winning industry awards such as “Best AI Advertising Tool” and “Most Innovative Advertising Technology Company” in 2022, and its official website says it has 3 million users.
AdCreative.ai is an all-rounder for ad creative generation, covering banners, images, dynamic videos, and other forms. The company released features such as “competitor ad analysis” in 2023, and launched features such as “video ad generation” and “social media ad generation” in 2024.
Specific example: Acrelec, a leader in retail digital solutions, tested more than 240 images in three months; Generating more than 150 custom ideas per product for Häagen-Dazs in the Spanish market resulted in a significant 11,000% increase in actionable customer responses while significantly reducing cost per thousand impressions.
In 2024, AdCreative.ai managed $14 billion in ad spend, indicating that many businesses trust and use the platform for advertising, and also reflect its significant influence in the advertising market.
Jasper.ai: Templated advertising production, small team leveraged $6.5 million ARR
Jasper.ai Utilize AI technology to create high-quality marketing content. The platform utilizes natural language processing technology to support the generation of various types of content, including blog posts, ad copy, emails, and social media posts, among others.
It provides users with more than 60 templates, covering many marketing scenarios such as advertising, blogs, e-commerce, and email, which can help users quickly build content frameworks. For example, in blog creation, it can quickly generate high-quality articles that meet SEO standards; In terms of social media copy generation, the brand voice customization feature ensures that the generated content aligns with the brand’s style.
Not only that, but Jasper.ai also integrates tools like Grammarly to check for content plagiarism and errors, allowing users to easily call its AI capabilities on any website and further integrate it into users’ daily workflows.
Currently, the company’s ARR is $6.5 million, and the team size is about 15 people.
There is no doubt that the application of AI in the advertising industry is becoming a powerful tool for driving innovation, improving efficiency, and solving social problems. Each case is not only a demonstration of technology, but also a new way for brands to interact with the market. The combination of these insights and case studies provides us with a new perspective on the role of AI in modern marketing.
