A new study conducted by Taboola, in collaboration with university researchers, has found that AI-generated ads match human creativity.
The study was conducted in collaboration with researchers at Columbia University, Harvard University, Technical University of Munich, and Carnegie Mellon University. It provides a look at how generative AI compares to human creativity in driving consumer action by analysing large-scale real-world ad performance.
AI wins by appearing authentically human and prioritising visual trust signals.
While GenAI has revolutionised production speed and cost, its impact on actual performance has remained a subject of intense debate. The new study, titled ‘AI Ads That Work: How AI Creative Stacks Up Against Humans,’ analysed hundreds of thousands of live ads running on Realize, Taboola’s performance advertising platform, totalling more than 500 million impressions and 3 million clicks.
Insights from the academic research include GenAI ads performing just as well as human-made ads. In raw data, AI ads saw a slightly higher average click-through-rate (CTR) (0.76 per cent) compared to human ads (0.65 per cent), though they performed comparably when researchers applied the tightest statistical controls.
AI-generated ads that did not “look like AI” achieved the highest engagement of all groups, outperforming both human-made ads and AI ads that were perceived as artificial.
Human faces are the “secret ingredient” for trust: The study found that one of the most important factors in making an ad feel “human” and trustworthy was the presence of a large, clear human face. Based on Taboola’s best practices and policy restrictions, AI-generated ads were more likely to include these trust cues than their human-made counterparts.
AI-generated visuals increased or maintained click-through rates without reducing downstream conversion performance, suggesting that advertisers don’t have to trade quality or conversions for production scale.
Food, drink, and finance brands were among the first to adopt AI ads: Specific sectors, most notably, the food and drink and personal finance industries, were early to adopt AI ads.
“Taboola’s platform provided us with a literal gold mine of real-world data that is simply unavailable in a lab setting. By analysing over 500 million impressions, we were able to move past the hype of GenAI and uncover its real impact in large-scale settings,” Oded Netzer, vice dean for research, Columbia Business School said.
“Our findings prove that when AI is used to enhance human cues—like the trust found in a human face—it doesn’t just match human performance; it often sets a new ceiling for engagement”.
The study utilised a quasi-experimental “sibling ads” approach, comparing matched pairs of AI-generated and human-made ads created by the same advertiser for the same campaign on the same day. This methodology allowed researchers to isolate the impact of the GenAI creative while controlling for external variables like the identity of the advertiser, timing, audience targeting, and landing pages.
