unBoxed innovation:
Empowering customers with AI-powered creativity tools

Digital advertisers have long faced a common challenge: creating high-quality, diverse creative assets at scale across multiple formats and channels. The issue has been particularly acute for smaller businesses and those with limited creative resources. For David Meers, a Senior Manager of Product at Amazon Ads, this challenge looked like an opportunity.

David is an Amazon boomerang—a term for people who departed the company and then came back—and his return to Amazon Ads was rooted in the exciting potential of incorporating generative AI into advertising.

"We're using a range of generative AI to do what would have been impossible in the past, like enabling small sellers to create beautiful ads," he explains. "This mixture of really interesting technology and a huge business opportunity is pretty unique."

David’s team’s innovation is featured in AI creative studio, an AI-powered solution that empowers customers to create compelling advertising at any scale.

At its core, AI creative studio is a free-to-use suite of AI tools that empower advertisers to generate and transform image and video creative assets at a new level of ease and speed. By harnessing the power of artificial intelligence, AI creative studio accelerates the production of full-funnel campaigns—starting from something as simple as a product description or creative brief.

AI creative studio stemmed from one crucial insight: Advertisers with creative gaps were sometimes hesitant to start building campaigns because they didn’t have the pre-existing assets that were needed. David and his team saw an opportunity to shift how customers manage their advertising success. "Our core hypothesis was that advertisers are more likely to expand to middle- and upper-funnel advertising if they have tools that enable exploration, creativity, and iteration."

So how does the product fundamentally impact the asset creation process? Rather than retrofitting AI capabilities into existing campaign workflows, AI creative studio adopts a "creative and business-objective first" approach. The tool enables users to begin with a simple brief and guides them through the creation of assets that supports their entire campaign strategy.

"When I joined the team, some work had already been done. There were a lot of different ideas about what the product would be or could be," David recalls. The team had to navigate a delicate balance between speed and quality, ensuring that the product met the high standards that our customers expect while also delivering on its promise of rapid creative generation.

David emphasizes the importance of building trust with the broader leadership team to move quickly. "One of the things that was so exciting was how we’ve been able to move so quickly with the team over the last six months. One thing that's amazing about Amazon as a bigger company is that if you have a good idea and a lot of conviction, you can actually get things launched really fast, and after you’ve proven the idea, you can scale."

The development process had its challenges. David recognized the need to shift the projected timeline to ensure that AI creative studio reached its full potential. "One of the things I did when I first joined was to reset expectations on when we would actually launch. We increased and clarified our ambitions for the product and took some time to make sure we launched something we were proud of," he says. This updated timeline ultimately allowed the team to create a more robust and impactful product.

The impact of AI creative studio goes beyond streamlining the creative process; it's also shifting the dynamics of the advertising industry. David notes that the tool has generated significant interest from creative agencies, which was initially surprising given their existing capabilities. "Agencies have made the majority of the users who signed up for the beta, which was a surprising level of interest given the caliber of creative work these agencies already produce on their own," he added.

The value to agencies makes sense. They want to stay current on the latest advancements, streamline their creative production, and expand their generative AI capabilities. Agencies see AI creative studio as particularly valuable for mid-size and larger brands that advertise across an array of digital outlets.

The fusion of cutting-edge technology with Amazon's broad resources and customer insights is driving new creative possibilities, and as AI creative studio evolves, it has the potential to democratize high-quality ad creation, leveling the playing field for businesses of all sizes.

David and his team are now focused on expanding the tool's capabilities to cater to a wider range of users. While initially targeted at advertisers, AI creative studio can be adapted for other use cases like product pages and storefronts. "Both internal teams and external agencies have emphasized the value of the tool for developing assets across all of their marketing," David says. He hopes this expansion will make AI creative studio an integral part of Amazon's broader offerings.

The team is continually refining the user experience based on customer feedback. David notes the importance of making the tool accessible to users who might not have extensive experience with generative AI or creative tools. "We spend a lot of time talking to customers," he explains. "With AI, we think we can really help advertisers come up with novel and creative concepts, and then execute them in minutes." This user-centric approach ensures that AI creative studio will remain intuitive and valuable as its capabilities grow.

Re-imagining the future of advertising

As AI creative studio matures and evolves, David and his team see it as a fundamental tool for building a more inclusive, innovative, and efficient content creation process. Their ongoing work promises to push the boundaries of what's possible in AI-powered advertising, creating new opportunities for businesses of all sizes to create compelling, effective ad campaigns.

By combining advanced generative AI capabilities with deep customer insights, David and his team are solving current pain points while anticipating what challenges customers will face next. "The thing about Amazon Ads is that the possibilities for what you can do here are endless. If you go to almost any other company, you have to work on whatever they’re working on. It’s different at Amazon Ads. Your own ideas have room to grow here."