[Research Round-Up] The Effectiveness of AI-Generated Photos for Advertising and marketing

(This yr, I am devoting a few of my Analysis Spherical-Up posts to tutorial analysis papers referring to the usage of synthetic intelligence for advertising functions. This put up options an unpublished paper that compares the efficiency of AI-generated vs. human-made photographs throughout three advertising use instances.)

“The ability of generative advertising:  Can generative AI attain human-level visible advertising content material?”

• Authors – Jochen Hartmann and Yannick Exner, Technical College of Munich; Samuel Domdey, Technical College of Hamburg-Harburg

All the AI-generated photographs in these research have been created utilizing a two-step course of. In step one, the researchers employed an image-to-text AI mannequin to create a textual description of every human-made comparability picture. These textual descriptions have been then used (with out modification) because the prompts to supply the AI-generated photographs.

Listed below are abbreviated descriptions of the three research and the high-level outcomes of every research.

Examine 1 – Human Notion of High quality and Realism

The target of this research was to check the perceived high quality and realism of AI-generated vs. human-made photographs throughout three advertising use instances – product design, social media, and print adverts. 

Every picture was rated by 5 human evaluators for high quality and realism utilizing a 7-point Likert scale (1 = low, 7 = excessive), leading to a complete of seven,830 scores.

The scores for high quality and realism different relying on the precise picture being evaluated and on the mannequin used to create the AI-generated picture. General, nonetheless, the research revealed that the AI-generated photographs outperformed or have been on par with the human-made photographs within the product design and social media use instances.

Within the print advert use case, the AI-generated photographs have been considerably much less more likely to carry out on par with the human-made photographs by way of perceived high quality and realism.

Once more, the scores different considerably relying on the mannequin used to create the AI-generated picture. So, the selection of mannequin issues.

Examine 2 – Social Media Engagement

This research’s goal was to check the flexibility of AI-generated photographs vs. a human-made picture to supply engagement in a social media setting. On this research, engagement referred to the “chance to love” a picture and the “chance to remark” on a picture.

This research included one human-made picture and 13 AI-generated photographs. The researchers recruited 701 contributors who have been randomly assigned to one of many 14 photographs. Every participant was requested to fee how probably they have been to love or touch upon a picture utilizing a 7-point Likert scale (1=low, 7=excessive).

The outcomes of this research confirmed that the AI-generated photographs usually carried out on par with the human-made picture by way of social media engagement.

Examine 3 – Click on-By means of Charges On Banner Adverts

The target of this research was to check the effectiveness of AI-generated photographs vs. a human-made picture when utilized in a web-based banner advert. The measure of effectiveness used was click-through charges (CTR).

This research was a randomized discipline experiment that consisted of a real-world on-line banner advert marketing campaign run on a number one show promoting platform. The human-made picture was an expert photograph bought from Adobe Inventory. The marketing campaign ran December 28-29, 2022, and generated 702 clicks on 86,809 impressions.

Of the 14 photographs examined, the human-made picture ranked tenth by way of CTR. The perfect-performing AI-generated picture achieved a 21.5% increased CTR in comparison with the human-made picture.

This research additionally demonstrated that mannequin alternative issues. The perfect-performing AI mannequin (Steady Diffusion v1-3) outperformed the worst mannequin (Disco Diffusion) by 65.5%.

My Take

The three research described within the Hartmann et al. paper show that generative AI fashions can create visible content material that’s on par with – and infrequently higher than – human-made photographs for quite a lot of advertising use instances.

If something, these research in all probability underestimate the flexibility of generative AI fashions to supply human-level visible content material. The prompts used to create the AI photographs for these research have been produced by an image-to-text AI mannequin, and the researchers did not modify these prompts. Prompts engineered by skilled entrepreneurs would probably have resulted in simpler AI photographs.

These research additionally in all probability underestimate the standard of photographs generative AI fashions can at present produce as a result of new, extra succesful variations of a few of the fashions used within the research have been launched because the research have been carried out. For instance, these research used DALL-E2 and Midjourney v4, however DALL-E3 and Midjourney v6 are actually accessible.

At minimal, the outcomes of those research counsel that AI-generated photographs are more likely to play an more and more vital function in advertising.