TV industry bets AI can peel ad dollars away from Big Tech

Television commercials might soon look a lot like the ads in your Instagram and Tik Tok feeds: scrappy, niche and often obscure.

- Patrick Coffee & Katie Deighton

Media conglomerates like Comcast and hardware makers including Roku are developing artificial-intelligence tools and self-service platforms to make streaming-TV ads affordable for small and midsize businesses.

Their inspirations are tech giants like Meta and Google, whose riches largely flow from millions of small businesses on their ad platforms. If the TV industry can compete with those companies' massive reach and ability to demonstrate results, they envision enabling a flood of TV commercials from companies that hadn't considered themselves ready for prime time.

"I don't think people understand how many more TV ads are about to be created," said James Borow, vice president of product and engineering for Universal Ads, Comcast's digital sales platform.

The ad sellers are looking to bring down costs by offering their AI-powered services free of charge. Universal Ads next week will release its AI Video Generator assistant, developed with startup Creatify, that mirrors Meta's plans to fully automate ad production.

And Britain's Channel 4 this summer introduced a generative AI service that can cut the cost of producing a 30-second commercial by around 90%, according to the organization.

One of Channel 4's first AI ads promoted a podcast called "The Good, The Bad & The Healthy." "This is very much about how we can democratize TV," said Samantha Hicks, Channel 4's head of advertiser strategy.

The consumer-targeting capabilities of connected TV are another big part of the small-business pitch.