2025 AI Advertising Trends: What's Next for Creative Automation

While it's no secret that AI has been transforming the advertising industry for years, the pace of change is now accelerating. Earlier this year, Meta announced it aims to let brands fully create and target ads using just a product image and planned marketing spend through its AI tools by the end of next year, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The introduction of AI has brought a new dimension to the creative process, empowering creative teams to experiment, scale, and push the boundaries of what's possible. In this blog, we'll explore the key AI advertising and creative automation trends to watch in 2025, and what they mean for marketers aiming to stay ahead.

Tapping Emotion in Creative Automation

After OpenAI released GPT-5, it was surprising that many users began asking for GPT-4 to come back. Why? Because GPT-4 felt warmer, more natural, and more empathetic. Its conversational tone created a sense of companionship that resonated deeply with people. This phenomenon reveals an important truth: when something — whether a product or an ad — conveys emotional nuance, people connect with it.

The same holds true in advertising. Generating an ad through an ad creative automation platform is easy, but making it resonate is far more difficult. A memorable ad doesn't just inform, it makes people feel something. One proven way to achieve this is through storytelling. AI can help by analyzing your app's features, then weaving them into relatable scenarios to generate short, story-driven ads that audiences can resonate with.

Beyond storytelling, AI systems are also learning to gauge emotional responses more directly by analyzing whether users react positively to an image or ad based on performance data, such as engagement metrics and conversion rates.

While this type of emotional analysis is still evolving, today's ad automation tools already make it possible to bring more "human" qualities into creatives. For instance, Playturbo's Avatar to Video feature enables advertisers to produce relatable spokesperson videos at scale. Advertisers can choose from hundreds of avatars of different genders, ages, and skin tones to generate lip-synced, natural-looking spokesperson videos in multiple languages and tones.

Personalization at Scale Through Ad Creative Automation

Beyond emotional resonance, people are more receptive to ads when they feel directly relevant to their own needs and interests. 

Creative automation platforms enable advertisers to generate multiple ad variations in bulk and align each version with distinct user segments. This allows brands to speak to users in ways that feel more relatable, whether by highlighting specific app features or in-app offers that match their preferences.

To take personalization even further, Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) bridges creative automation with programmatic delivery. While ad creative automation produces the variations, DCO uses real-time data, such as location, device type, or browsing behavior, to assemble and deliver the most relevant creative combination to each user.

This approach not only saves time but also helps advertisers connect with audiences, fostering deeper engagement and meaningful relationships.

The Human + AI Co-Pilot Model for Ad Automation

It might seem as though AI handles everything in the ad creative automation process, but does that mean humans are out of the picture? Not at all. The most successful approach is a co-pilot relationship where humans and AI each play to their strengths.

In this partnership, humans set the strategic direction: defining campaign objectives, brand voice, and creative guidelines. AI then serves as the executor, streamlining the creative process.

While creative automation platforms can rapidly generate, test, and adapt ad creatives across various formats and markets, human oversight remains essential for ensuring brand consistency, crafting compelling narratives, and maintaining compliance with regulations.

AI isn't a replacement but is a powerful reinforcement. It extends human creativity and efficiency, while people provide the context, empathy, and judgment that make ads resonate. Together, this human + AI collaboration creates smarter, faster, and more impactful advertising.

How Creative Automation Platforms Drive Smarter Ad Strategies

In 2025, top-performing companies are seeking efficiency and scalability by using ad automation to streamline their workflows. However, many organizations still struggle to unlock the full potential of AI, often finding it difficult to translate adoption into real business value. That gap often comes from unclear goals and incomplete adoption strategies.

To succeed with ad creative automation, here are a few key steps to consider:

Define Your Audience and Goals

Break down your app's target segments and map which features appeal most to each group. For example, the mid-core strategy game Kingshot used a creative automation platform to generate multiple ad variations tailored to distinct player preferences, achieving higher engagement by matching styles to user interests.

Choose the Right Tools

Just because ad automation platforms offer a wide range of features doesn't mean you need to use them all. Focus on the tools that solve your immediate challenges, whether that's turning static images into videos, localizing creatives for different markets, or generating playable ads from existing video assets.

Launch, Learn, and Iterate

Once you've created a few variations you're confident in, don't overthink which one to choose — just launch them. Performance data will quickly show you which creatives resonate best. With ad creative automation, you can pivot in real time and scale up the winning versions, making your testing process faster and more efficient.

Why Playturbo is the Right Partner for Creative Automation

Playturbo empowers mobile app advertisers to build high-performing ads with speed and precision. With a vast library of up-to-date templates, advertisers can easily follow the latest creative trends and customize elements such as visuals, copy, and music to suit their campaign goals.

From ad creation to campaign tracking, analysis, and ongoing optimization, Playturbo's full suite of tools gives advertisers everything they need to generate AI ads more efficiently and maximize performance. Whether you're scaling across global markets or running smaller, targeted campaigns, Playturbo streamlines the entire process.

Ready to elevate your ad strategy? Explore Playturbo's innovative solutions and discover how we support developers to generate high-performing AI ads at scale. Follow us on LinkedIn to keep track of all our updates. Contact us today to kickstart your journey with video ads!