This ugly AI ad scaled from $0 to $40K spend in 20 days

A few weeks ago, a brand came to us to get a Google Ads audit.

While our team was reviewing the account, we noticed something interesting.

They had scaled from 0 to nearly $40K in Demand Gen spend in just 20 days.

Today, those campaigns are running at around $80K.

That immediately caught our attention, so we dug deeper into their funnel to understand how they pulled it off.

The brand used a simple funnel:

YouTube Ads → VSL → Checkout

They ran 100% in-stream YouTube campaigns with long-form videos (2-5 mins).

The creatives followed a classic sales structure… and honestly, they looked pretty rough.

Not nicely edited. Looks like something from the 90s taught by your high school teacher. 

But they clearly worked, so we kept watching.

As we watched more closely, our internal "AI radar" started going off.

The signals were there… subtle inconsistencies in the visuals, that slightly off quality that AI-generated content tends to have.

And the more we analyzed the footage, the more obvious it became.

The ad was created using AI.

As we’re heading to the end of the year… I've been thinking about how much AI-generated video has evolved in 2025.

It feels like we've made more progress this year than in all the previous years combined.

At the beginning of the year, creating a realistic AI video felt impossible…

Running one as an actual ad was out of the question.

But then VEO 3 and Sora 2 launched… and everything snowballed from there.

Now we're at a point where the differences are so subtle that you have to pay close attention to spot them.

More importantly…

These ads don’t just look good. They are converting right now.

Every week, I see more AI-generated ads scaling on YouTube.

I've spotted several pushing six and seven figures in monthly spend.

That said, this does not mean AI ads are perfect.

Coming from an agency with an entire AI creative department, we've learned that AI excels at certain formats and styles while struggling with others.

This brand is a good example.

They used a UGC-style video with a person talking about a problem affecting older people.

When I watched it, I honestly couldn't tell if that was a real person or not.

On top of that…

Older demographics usually don’t pick up on the subtle cues that signal something is AI.

But there are plenty of other formats where AI falls short.

In those cases, the limitations come from the technology itself, not from prompts or tools.

And as the models continue to improve, I expect we'll see AI handle more and more formats successfully.

So… am I saying they will replace human creatives?

You probably hear a lot of people say things like, “You don’t need to hire UGC creators or creative agencies anymore.”

I don't buy into that extreme.

Experts will always have their place.

But I do believe we're heading toward a major shift in how the creative process works.

A future where human teams handle the vision and direction… while AI takes care of the creation, iteration, and optimization.

And in that future, there won’t be any questions about whether AI ads work or not.

They will be the common practice.

Jackson

CEO & Founder of Echelonn

How we can help:

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