Artificial Intelligence in Advertising Creativity

The authors propose a creative advertising system (CAS) for the generation and testing of advertising creative ideas, founded on artificial intelligence (AI) principles. The proposed system emerges from a conceptual framework where advertising creativity is more broadly defined as a search process, the outcomes of which should be evaluated based on a set of rules. This broader definition provides a generative perspective and extends current approaches to advertising creativity that are mainly based on outcome measures such as perceived novelty and appropriateness (value). The framework is flexible enough to accommodate existing advertising concepts such as advertising templates and explain why executional advertising elements are not consistently effective across different ads. The proposed system can be used both as a reflection and a generation tool for advertising creators and offers promising opportunities for interdisciplinary research. Fundamentally, it can help aspiring and established creators understand that creativity is not an elite privilege but rather a systematic process which can be aided by data and computation.