Amazon widens access to video generator as AI ad tools gain traction
In This Article:
This story was originally published on Marketing Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Marketing Dive newsletter.
Less than a year after releasing in beta, Amazon’s artificial intelligence-powered video generator is now available to all U.S. advertisers on the e-commerce platform. The fast rollout of the solution, which spins up half a dozen videos based on the input of a product ID, speaks to the mounting arms race between digital advertising platforms when it comes to leveraging generative AI to produce rich media assets, particularly for small- and mid-sized marketers that typically can’t afford them.
The news announced Tuesday follows Google’s latest updates on its Veo AI video tool from May and Meta expanding its generative AI vision to encompass more aspects of the marketing pipeline. For Amazon, the simply named video generator wields a few advantages, namely that it is up and running right now.
“It's real. This isn’t like a ‘coming soon’ message,” said Jay Richman, vice president of product and technology at Amazon, who positioned the offering against “vaporware” and "fantastical prototypes.”
The latest version of Amazon’s video generator can create far more sophisticated ads than those that were available during the beta period that began last September, per a demo Richman showed to Marketing Dive. Rather than focusing on static scenes, such as a record player sitting on a bare table, the technology can emulate realistic motion from virtual models, like a besuited man checking a watch on his wrist for the time. It is also better at stringing multiple scenes together, with smoother transitions between animations, and can include elements like humans or pets for dynamism.
“We had to do a lot to constrain the models to avoid hallucinations or to improve our yield rate. We were kind of optimizing for the floor of creative quality versus the ceiling,” said Richman of the video generator’s early stages.
Video generator lives on Amazon’s sponsored brand campaign builder and can surface six videos in a matter of minutes based on the advertiser’s input and campaign needs. The back end analyzes the submitted product’s detail page, including customer reviews, and feeds those factors into an image generator that then sends information into the video model. Advertisers can upload existing media from their library, such as social content or product demos, as well as assets like logos. Editing tools allow for fine-tuning logo placements, fonts and headlines while ensuring the end result matches any brand-specific guidelines