Why everyone from your local restaurants to the school fair is using the same ads

If you’ve been anywhere near social media lately, you’ll have probably seen it.

Advertising that all looks a bit the same. The same sort of font, with the same sort of layout, lots of text and generic images.

The ads are produced by generative AI platforms and are being used to advertise everything from a new business opening to a local school fair.

It’s as easy to create as giving ChatGPT, or other generative AI tools, the request to “make an ad”.

ChatGPT processes about two-and-a-half billion requests a day globally, and it’s been estimated about 15 million of those come from New Zealand.

One New Zealand business owner, whom RNZ has agreed not to identify, said she had used it to make an advertisement recently.

“I didn’t really know what I was doing but I got there.”

She said she opted for AI because she didn’t have to worry about getting the right lighting or product placement. “I just kept adapting it until it looked like what I wanted.”

So is it a threat to traditional advertising agencies?

Vaughn Davis, creative director of advertisment and communication agency The Goat Farm said he received a request from a pro bono client this week sending something they had put together with AI to see if it could be finessed.

“What we’re mostly seeing is organisations that wouldn’t normally work with an agency using AI tools to generate posters, social posts and so on. There’s probably no harm in that - and if your local bowls club puts out a poster that looks 90 percent identical to one from a badminton club in Turkmenistan and everyone’s happy, go for your life.

“If ad agencies use the same tools to generate images that look like everyone else’s, then we’re not doing our job. We’re here to help clients stand out, show customers why they’re different and better, and convince people to take the next step. You don’t do that by delivering the machine-built average of every other ad that’s ever been made.”

Katherine Jensen, a professional teaching fellow in the University of Auckland’s marketing department, said it was now extremely obvious when people were using generative AI in their advertising.

“It does all look very similar and I think with so much of it around, it almost heightens the need for genuine human creativity. It’s something that’s going to stand out about a brand if it’s not the same AI generated slop that everyone else is using.”

She said there was an increasing backlash towards it. “People are really getting AI fatigue already and I think it comes across as being quite inauthentic. It raises questions around trust that people have in brands, how relatable a brand is, if there’s nothing to differentiate it, nothing that’s really unique about it, I think people are so overwhelmed with messages they’ll just pass by and it even has a sort of repellent effect for an increasing number of people.”

She said she was having discussions with students in her digital marketing course about it.

“There’s a real undercurrent of strong dislike for AI content. I appreciate that in some contexts it’s necessary, you know, brands are working in a very competitive marketplace and they need to be able to produce large volumes of content just to keep up with the competition, but I think there’s absolutely still a place for quality, original, human-generated content and I think it makes the good stuff stand out perhaps even more now.”

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