The Heart of the Machine Original
Author: Zhang Qian
Write a few words creatively, get the finished product in 10 minutes, and the industry finally has its own dedicated AI platform.
In March last year, a video of Coca-Cola's "Revitalization" campaign garnered widespread attention on social media. The video tells the story of a fantastic adventure sparked by a bottle of Coca-Cola. Every time this bottle of Coke comes into contact with a painting, the bottle body will be "creatively" transformed and naturally integrated into the painting. Finally, "The Girl with a Pearl Earring" also opens the Coke bottle and hands it to the outsider.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGa1imApfdg
This interesting video was created by Coca-Cola with the help of OpenAI's DALL・E 2 and ChatGPT models. In a creative way, it tells the public that ads can be made with AI in this way.
In fact, this kind of advertising is not uncommon in daily life, and you may not have noticed that many of the ads you see are AI-generated or co-produced, including advertisements in novels, games, e-commerce and other fields.
However, those involved in the industry know that the real production process is not as simple as it seems. In order to get these creative materials that meet the delivery criteria, advertisers often have to go through a lot of torture. This kind of torture not only exists in the drawing process, but also runs through the entire process, including multiple key links such as creative stimulation, content output, and review and delivery. Therefore, the process of using AI to produce creative materials can also be likened to a "card drawing" process full of uncertainty. How to improve the efficiency of this "card gacha" process and improve the experience in the entire chain from creative stimulation to final delivery has become the core issue of concern for many advertisers.
Recently, a one-stop AI ad creative platform came into their sights. This platform is called Tencent Advertising Ideas, which is supported by Tencent's hybrid model, and is currently fully open to advertisers, and the advertising images shown above are generated and produced on this platform. Judging from the feedback from advertisers, Tencent Advertising Ideas not only helped a lot in the "raw image" link, but also helped them save a lot of trouble in the entire production and delivery process, and finally achieved good advertising results. How are these pain points broken down individually? Let's look at them one by one.
Want to use AI to make advertising images, but can't write prompts?
For advertisers who are new to AI mapping, writing prompts is the first hurdle to overcome. Only by writing the prompt words well can the potential of the large model be fully stimulated.
A high-quality prompt can effectively improve the overall quality of the image.
However, this is not an easy task. A well-effective prompt often contains many elements such as the subject, scene, details, style, rendering, etc., and the cost of manual learning is very high. Moreover, many existing models do not support Chinese very well, requiring users to translate their own prompts into accurate English, and there are many English proprietary words, which further raises the threshold for the use of AIGC tools. Shi Yu, senior director of Tencent's creative advertising center, mentioned that during their early visits to advertising agencies, they found that more than 80% of them were unfamiliar with the job of writing prompts.
But on Tencent's advertising platform, it doesn't seem that difficult to write prompts. First of all, as a tool with the support of domestic large models, you can write Chinese tips directly on it, without translating into English. Secondly, it provides a "smart expansion" function: you only need to enter a simple screen subject information (such as a birthday party), and it can automatically structure and recommend the rest of the content, effectively improving the richness and quality of image generation. If there are elements in the generated diagram that you don't want, you can list them in the box below and regenerate them. With this structured template, you'll be able to make all sorts of changes on it instead of staring at an empty input box.
Of course, there will be some extreme situations at work, such as the brain is completely stuck, and even the subject can't think of it. In this case, you can take a look at the "Inspiration" section of Tencent Advertising Ideas, where there are popular material images divided by industry. If you find the feeling you want, you can directly click "Make Similar", and the hint of the reference image will be automatically pasted into the input box for you to modify.
For many advertisers who want to get started with AI mapping tools, the design of Tencent's advertising platform makes the learning curve of such tools very smooth, which naturally attracts many people to take the first step.
Have a diagram in hand, but don't know how to reuse it?
Advertising is an industry that needs to be fresh and adaptable to all kinds of changes, so the demand for creative materials is very high. As Jiang Jie, vice president of Tencent, said, "The amount of material is not enough, and it is difficult to have a chance to increase the volume, so advertisers can only desperately put on materials that are useful and good." That's the difficulty he observes for advertisers.
In order to meet this need, it is necessary to generate new materials from scratch, but it is also an idea to make good use of existing materials and realize high-quality materials.
Sometimes this change is very simple, such as just changing the horizontal image into a vertical image, or changing the background of the product, but sometimes it is also difficult, and it may be necessary to maintain some elements and style of the original image, and also to create new elements. Without the right tools, these tasks have to be done manually, which will undoubtedly increase the time and labor costs of creative creation for advertisers.
On the Tencent Advertising platform, these tasks have been automated, and the newly launched functions such as "Diagram Diagram", "Product Background Composition", "Wonderful Idea Derivation", and "Specific Style Lora" can make the diagram ever-changing.
First, let's take a look at the "Picture Map". In the world of advertising, successful start-up creatives are unique because they quickly engage audiences. As a result, advertisers are looking to leverage these creatives, especially their unique visual style and persona, to replicate their success and extend their lifespan. In this regard, Tencent Advertising Miaosi's "Picture Map" function provides advertisers with a lot of choices, and the movements, temperaments, and relationships of the advertising characters can be extended in the generated images.
Next, let's take a look at "Product Background Compositing". Changing product backgrounds is essential to appeal to different audiences, adapt to various advertising platforms, and enhance product features. It also creates contextual marketing, avoids aesthetic fatigue, and adapts to seasonal or holiday themes. This change helps to improve the visual appeal of the ads and the market conversion rate. Tencent Advertising's "Product Background Synthesis" can not only replace various backgrounds according to the advertiser's text prompts, but also directly connect to the product library, so as to achieve the natural integration of products and backgrounds.
"Ideas Derived" is mainly used to expand the size and layout of the creative to ensure that the ads maintain high-quality visual effects when displayed on different devices and platforms, so as to expand the audience coverage and improve the advertising effect. As shown in the image below, it allows the image to grow naturally to the sides, and the resulting new image is very original, and the generation process does not require manual operation.
"Specific Style Lora" can serve advertising scenarios that already have a specific IP image, such as game advertising. In these scenarios, advertisers want to generate images that are similar to existing IP styles, but with an innovative image. With the help of Tencent Advertising Miaosi's "Specific Style Lora" function, advertisers only need to provide 10 reference images to customize stylized small models and extend the material according to the specific image of the game's IP characters.
From these functions, it can be seen that on the Tencent Advertising Ideas platform, the secondary creation based on existing advertising creatives has become easier and more efficient than ever. This not only saves a lot of time and resources, but also opens up new creative possibilities for the advertising industry.
Can use AI to make graphs, but don't know how to make them original?
AI-generated graphics are really getting more and more beautiful, and I believe many people feel this way. It is true that both domestic and foreign large models have this characteristic, and there is not much difference between each large model in terms of the exquisiteness of the generated diagram. But does a great image necessarily meet the needs of advertisers? The answer is not necessarily.
Take portrait ad graphics, for example. Guo Wei, deputy general manager of product technology of Tencent Advertising Platform, mentioned that in the early stage of creating Tencent Advertising Ideas, they actually provided some particularly beautiful character pictures for advertisers. But the other party said that it was not what they wanted, because this kind of beauty should be "only in heaven", and what they wanted was real beauty, just like you can see on the Bund in Shanghai. That's why Guo Wei's team focused on highly realistic characters, so that the characters generated by Tencent Ad's creative ideas – whether they were professional women or young students – fit their identities.
In addition, the character pictures generated by Tencent Advertising Ideas also have strong localization characteristics. For example, in an antique novel advertisement, Tencent Ad generated images that incorporate many ancient Chinese elements, and the characters' faces, makeup, and costumes are very close to the aesthetics of ancient Chinese style. This is due to the extensive annotation of Chinese elements by the Tencent Advertising Miaosi team during the training process.
In the field of advertising, this highly native image generation technology greatly simplifies and optimizes the process of creating ads. In the past, due to the high cost of direct shooting and the difficulty of finding license-free portrait materials, many industries had to abandon the use of portraits, or use methods such as coding and cropping the head to affect the aesthetics and delivery effect. But nowadays, advertisers can tailor a large number of portrait assets to their promoted content without worrying about costs. Moreover, because Tencent Advertising Miaozhi has achieved the generation of materials without portrait authorization, advertisers have no worries about using them.
The picture is done, but the delivery always takes a detour?
The various needs of the advertising industry for graphs have been explained in detail earlier. But even if these needs are met, some images are still not suitable for serving, because the advertising industry has strict delivery standards, and every image used for advertising must go through a meticulous review process. For advertisers, the serial process of creating an image and then reviewing it can be extremely painful. In general, the wait time for review can be as long as 4 to 6 hours, and even longer during a big sale. If the image fails to be reviewed, the advertiser enters a new cycle.
In this regard, Tencent Advertising's clever countermeasure is to put the review process in front of the entire production process, including writing prompts, generating basemaps, adding additional elements and other links. Therefore, when using Tencent Advertising Ideas, you will find that sometimes it will intercept some generated results, or refuse to respond to some prompts that do not meet the delivery standards, so as to avoid advertisers wasting energy on graphs that do not meet the standards. And the reason why it is able to do this is because it has some knowledge about industry experience and audit regulations, which helps it to filter risk materials in advance, laying a good foundation for subsequent "fast review".
In addition, Tencent Advertising has also made a lot of convenient designs for the secondary editing process based on the base map, such as one-click access to all historical materials, support for PSD template layer adjustment, puzzle typesetting and a variety of text editing functions, to ensure that you can add text, background, selling point information and other content in one stop. Moreover, the content of these secondary edits can also be pre-entered into the system for review. After the drawing is ready, it can also enter the automatic machine review first, so as to achieve a real "second review".
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An advertiser in the big health industry who has tried Tencent Advertising Miaozhi said that in the past, they produced original live-action portrait materials through model shooting, and the time cycle of traditional shooting and post-production was about 1~2 days, and the cost was about 300~800 yuan / group. Now, with Tencent Advertising Ideas to generate portrait materials, they can generate a usable creative in an average of 10 minutes, and the efficiency improvement is very obvious. Another advertiser said that the click-through rate of the novel creative they generated with Tencent Ads Clever Ideas increased by 14% compared to the average, and the delivery effect was quite good.
"In fact, our goal is very simple, that is, we hope to integrate the delivery, creativity, and review, and these ideas generated through AIGC can be exempted from review, so that everyone's overall efficiency can be improved, so that the materials can be directly delivered to the delivery side, and the whole process system can run out. Jiang Jie said in his speech.
Overall, this approach of Tencent Advertising has greatly shortened the delivery link and improved the delivery efficiency. This is something that many general-purpose AI mapping tools with comparable generative capabilities overlook.
In the competition of "manpower + computing power",
How can advertisers get a head start?
"Content production in today's era is not only a struggle for brainpower, but also a struggle for 'means'. The means here is the awareness of AIGC and the use of AIGC tools. Compared with the traditional creative output method that relies more on intuition, we now require "more, faster, better, and cheaper" creative production, that is, it is necessary to produce a certain amount of creative content efficiently and ensure the cost, if you can't adapt to this fast pace, it will be difficult to complete the marketing task. Therefore, we need to learn to make good use of intelligent tools. As long as you master these tools, you will not be competing with others on the same level. Others are competing purely with manpower and brainpower, but you are competing with manpower and computing power. Ma Che, an associate professor at the School of Advertising at Communication University of China, said at an event.
In fact, in the era of large models, all walks of life are accelerating into the competitive stage of "manpower + computing power". In the advertising industry, though, the process seems to be a bit faster. While many industries still have to spend a lot of time debugging due to poor integration of technology and processes, the advertising industry has ushered in Tencent Advertising Wonders, a product-level creative platform that can solve a large number of cumbersome problems in one stop, which has greatly improved production efficiency. Practitioners in this industry have also been pulled to a new starting line because of the emergence of Tencent Advertising Ideas, and they have more energy to think about content creativity, rather than being constrained by high-threshold tools or cumbersome processes. Therefore, the ability to integrate such platforms into their own workflows in a timely manner has become the key to improving their competitiveness.
At the press conference, Guo Wei mentioned three directions for the future of Tencent Advertising Ideas: the first direction is to build multi-modal capabilities, such as video generation, the second is to deeply integrate with Tencent's advertising system to get materials that advertisers like and users like, and the third is to achieve automation, real-time and intelligence with the upgrading of Tencent's underlying capabilities.
As Jiang Jie said, to achieve these points, you need not only technological leadership, but also a deep understanding of the industry, and Tencent Advertising has many years of accumulation in both aspects.
In the future, all advertisers need to do is master these tools and enter the era of full-scale creativity.