We ran a test between AI Ads and UGC Ads. Here’s the result...

A week ago, a famous AI ad maker tool called Icon became a trending topic on Twitter.

They seemed to be struggling publicly. Having a tough time, to put it lightly.

And a lot of people jumped on their failure.

Many saying AI ads don't convert, and that trying to replace the creative process with AI was a mistake from the start.

I get where that comes from. But I think people are drawing the wrong conclusions here.

I'm not sure exactly what went wrong at Icon…

However, there’s one thing I know for certain:

The problem isn't that AI ads don't convert.

In fact, we've reached a point where they consistently do.

If you spend any time in ad research tools, you'll notice more and more AI ads hitting scale.

Many of these are spending six or even seven figures per month.

We're seeing the same pattern play out with our own clients.

For one brand, we recently had 2 different creative types running in parallel:

1. AI video ads produced by our creative department

2. Native UGC pulled from the client’s Meta account, which had already been proven to work.

The AI ads hit 3 to 4% conversion rates. The native UGC landed between 1% and 1.5%.

When you look at CPA…

The AI ads came in at $57 while the native ads cost us $126 to $201 per acquisition.

So when people say "AI ads don't convert," I think they're misdiagnosing the problem.

AI-generated content now can deliver 80-90% the quality of what a human would create.

And with certain formats, it can look indistinguishable from the real thing.

I'm looking at AI ads all day, and honestly, sometimes, I can't tell the difference.

And the tools are only going to get better from here.

At this moment, the whole "AI versus human-made" debate has become irrelevant.

What matters is who's making the creative and how deeply they understand advertising.

From what I've seen, there's a big gap between how an "AI person" thinks about creatives versus how a trained advertiser approaches it.

The AI person usually focuses on visual quality.

Their main concern is whether the ad looks realistic enough to pass as human-made.

That's basically their entire framework for judging whether something is good or not.

Someone who understands advertising thinks differently.

They evaluate every element through a performance lens.

They can spot the subtle details that kill performance across many AI-generated ads I’ve seen, things like…

• Mismatched messaging between the hook and the offer

• Visual elements that trigger skepticism

• Copy that doesn't take into account where the prospect is in their buying journey

• etc

They understand what makes someone stop, read, and click versus what makes them scroll past.

Put the same AI tools in both people's hands…

And the advertiser will win every single time. It won’t even be a close race.

This is great news for you if you've got that in place though.

Because you don’t just get the ability to make more ads or test faster.

You can explore channels that used to require serious upfront investment on creatives.

Like the brand I mentioned above…

We leveraged AI creatives to break into YouTube Ads. A platform they didn’t see much success before.

I think this is the perfect time to ask yourself…

What platform have you wanted to explore but couldn’t justify the production budget?

Or maybe there’s a channel where results have been disappointing, but you've never had enough creative firepower to truly test it.

It’s never been cheaper and more accessible to find out the answer.

Jackson

Founder & CEO of Echelonn

P.S.

AI Ads are one of the things we create for our clients to help them scale Google Ads faster.

If you’re looking to upgrade your Google Ads performance and want to see what they can do for your brand…

Schedule a call with me here

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