How to Make Product Ads With AI for TikTok and YouTube—For (Almost) Free

TikTok Store, the ecommerce platform that permits customers to purchase and promote issues instantly on TikTok, moved $64.3 billion in merchandise in 2025, practically doubling from the yr earlier than. The U.S. alone accounted for $15.1 billion of that, and most of it was pushed by brief, low cost, face-to-camera movies of somebody holding a product and telling you why you want it.

These movies used to require an individual, a telephone, first rate lighting, and several other takes.

Lately, although, all you want is a product picture and three AI instruments—most of which can be found free of charge. This is a complete workflow, step-by-step, no technical background required, so you can begin your advertising and marketing empire.

Step 1: Get a clear product picture

Earlier than the rest, you have to know what you wish to promote. For this, you may have a number of choices: Both select one thing you’re captivated with, or just go forward and discover the most well liked gadgets on the TikTok store and obtain no matter you suppose will click on.

Obtain a photograph of the product you wish to promote—a chunk of clothes, an adjunct, a gadget, no matter. Should you’re promoting a particular product or are affiliated to an organization then use your individual provider images. Then crop the picture so solely the product is seen, with no mannequin, no background muddle, and no watermarks.

In our examples, we picked this inexperienced prime for TikTok (vertical format) and this Ledger crypto pockets for YouTube (horizontal format).

That crop issues greater than it might sound. The AI will deal with this picture because the supply of reality for the product, so the cleaner the reference, the extra devoted the end result.

Step 2: Put a mannequin in your product

This step is essential if you’re selling clothes and niknaks since they contain a extra human strategy.

Open ChatGPT and add the cropped picture. You need GPT Picture 2 for this step—in Decrypt’s personal head-to-head testing, it beat Google’s Nano Banana 2 on photorealism and product constancy, which is strictly what an AI-generated advert must not look pretend.



Then think about the surroundings you need for the advert, and switch it into a fast immediate.

You should utilize one thing like this: “Generate a vertical 9:16 picture of a Latina lady in her late 20s carrying this actual garment, posing for an informal smartphone picture in a vivid condominium. Protect each attribute of the product precisely as proven within the reference picture: form, proportions, shade, cloth texture, stitching, and match. Don’t redesign, recolor, or alter the product in any approach.”

We obtained one thing like this:

Swap the demographic particulars—ethnicity, age, physique kind—to match whoever your target market really is. Change the setting the identical approach: a health club for activewear, a café for equipment, a road nook for streetwear. For non-clothing merchandise, exchange “carrying” with “holding” or “utilizing.”

Need the mannequin someplace particular? Add a second picture of the situation and ask ChatGPT to put the topic of picture one inside picture two. Right here is our topic in an area station, simply because.

This trick additionally works with Google’s Nano Banana 2, which handles compositing effectively. Reve is a far cheaper various, however it tends to drop immediate particulars, so product accuracy might undergo.

Step 3: Ask ChatGPT for the script—in JSON

Now you want a script for a 10-second video. Do not write it your self; make ChatGPT do the advertising and marketing pondering. One thing like this will likely work, however be as detailed as you may in what you ask:

“Act as a senior direct-response marketer. Write a 10-second script in English for a UGC-style video the place the lady within the hooked up picture talks to the digicam and sells the hooked up product. The copy should sound pure and spoken, hook the viewer within the first two seconds, point out that the worth is $20, and shut with the decision to motion ‘faucet the procuring cart under.’ Output the script as JSON formatted for Google Stream, with a timeline describing what occurs on display, the digicam conduct, and the precise dialogue for every phase of the ten seconds.”

The JSON format is just not ornament. Video fashions, particularly from Google, comply with structured timelines way more precisely than free paragraphs, so that you get the dialogue, gestures, and beats you requested for. One warning: overview the output, as a result of it may be so literal that if the timeline ends at second eight, the mannequin might repeat an motion to fill the remaining two seconds.

If you’d like you may personalize the copy per platform. Within the immediate, ask the AI to say issues like “One of the best prime I’ve seen on my TikTok feed.” If you wish to swap social media, “tiktok feed” turns into “on X,” “in my Reels,” or “on Shorts” relying on the place it runs. The decision to motion modifications too: the procuring cart works on TikTok, “hyperlink in bio” suits Instagram, and “examine the pinned remark” fits YouTube.

Step 4: Generate the video in Google Stream

Go to Google Stream and choose Gemini Omni, the mannequin Google launched at I/O 2026 in Could. It generates clips of as much as 10 seconds with native audio—which means your mannequin really speaks the dialogue—and it accepts reference pictures, which is the entire level right here.

Google Veo works, and will arguably be higher, however Omni is cheaper… and we like low cost.

Add each recordsdata as references: the generated picture of your mannequin and the cropped product close-up. Paste the JSON into the immediate field. Decide vertical 9:16 for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, or horizontal 16:9 for normal YouTube movies and pre-roll adverts.

Now, the cash half. Stream provides non-subscribers 50 free credit per day, however Google’s help docs prohibit these to the Veo 3.1 fashions.

Omni in Stream (which is the mannequin we advocate) requires a paid Google AI plan. Plus ($7.99 a month) contains 200 month-to-month credit, Professional ($19.99) contains 1,000, and the 2 Extremely tiers carry 10,000 and 25,000.

There is a genuinely free backdoor, although: Google made Omni accessible for gratis inside YouTube Shorts and the YouTube Create app for customers 18 and older. And for reference, the developer API costs Omni at roughly $0.10 per second of video—a few greenback per clip.

Each Omni video carries Google’s invisible SynthID watermark figuring out it as AI-generated. It will not present on display, however platforms can detect it, so do not plan a enterprise round pretending the footage is actual.

Right here is the Ledger advert video we obtained. Keep in mind, video era has loads of a random parts as a result of creativity is vital for these fashions to work. Should you don’t like the primary era, attempt a number of extra instances.

Should you discover some irregularities that may be mounted in put up, then there’s no have to spend extra credit. There are free instruments that can allow you to reduce components of the video, change lighting, shade, and so forth.

For instance, on this Tiktok advert, the lady repeats the decision to motion. We have to change that, and also you’ll learn the way within the subsequent step

Step 5: Polish it in CapCut

Export the clip and open it in CapCut. That is the place you trim anomalies—AI video nonetheless produces the occasional further phrase or looping gesture—and reduce the clip to precisely what you need earlier than exporting straight to your social accounts.

Subtitles are the one function value listening to. The animated, word-by-word caption types that dominate TikTok sit behind CapCut Professional, which runs about $7.99 a month or $59.99 a yr, and the free tier caps automated captions. Guide textual content stays free, so in case you’re affected person, you may kind your individual.

The Tiktok advert ended up wanting like this after we mounted the decision to motion:

Taking place the rabbit gap

This workflow produces acceptable outcomes, not agency-grade ones. As soon as it clicks, you may need extra management: ElevenLabs for a constant model voice throughout dozens of movies, Kling for persistent AI avatars and instruments for movement management, node-based workflows like ComfyUI for granular scene management, n8n for automation, and so forth.

Every provides price and complexity, however the fundamental pipeline above is sufficient to take a look at whether or not a product sells earlier than spending something critical.

Promoting on TikTok Store doesn’t require an excessive amount of in your facet—simply being 18 or older with a authorities ID and financial institution particulars that match your registration, and approval normally lands inside three days. TikTok takes a 6% referral payment on most orders. Selling different folks’s merchandise as an affiliate requires 1,000 followers to use, and full entry takes 5,000 followers plus 30 days in this system.

YouTube dropped the barrier even decrease: In March, its Procuring Associates program opened to Associate Program creators with simply 500 subscribers throughout 12 international locations, together with the U.S. and Brazil.

Each TikTok and YouTube allow AI-generated promotional movies, however creators and advertisers should disclose how the content material was made and any industrial relationship behind it. Beneath TikTok’s AI-generated-content coverage, sensible AI-generated pictures, audio or video should be labeled; advertisers operating non-Spark adverts should additionally activate the “This advert comprises AI-generated content material” possibility in TikTok Advertisements Supervisor, whereas anybody selling a model, services or products should activate TikTok’s commercial-content disclosure setting.

YouTube equally requires creators to pick out “Sure” beneath “AI use” when a video comprises sensible content material generated or meaningfully altered with AI, after which YouTube applies an AI label; sponsored, endorsed or in any other case commercially influenced movies should individually use the platform’s paid-promotion disclosure.

X’s Authenticity coverage prohibits artificial or manipulated media when it’s deceptively offered and will trigger widespread confusion, threaten public security or produce critical hurt, whereas its promoting guidelines require adverts to be sincere, lawful and in line with the product being promoted. It doesn’t explicitly ban using AI-generated pictures, video, and audio in promotional content material.

However allow us to put your toes on the bottom with a sobering quantity earlier than you give up your job: Per Camille Moore, president of the advertising and marketing company Third Eye Insights, of the 803,500 TikTok Store shops working within the U.S. final yr, greater than half recorded zero gross sales. The instruments are practically free. The competitors is just not.