Advertising has always been part art and part science—and the art part is about to get a whole lot easier.

Data science, analytics, and artificial intelligence (AI) have led to major advances in the efficiency of digital advertising over the last two decades. Yet in a March 2023 survey, Amazon found that among advertisers who were unable to build successful campaigns, nearly 75% cited building ad creatives and choosing a creative format as their biggest challenges.

“Producing engaging and differentiated creatives can increase cost and often requires introducing additional expertise into the advertising process,” said Colleen Aubrey, senior vice president of Amazon Ads Products and Technology. “At Amazon Ads, we are always thinking about ways we can reduce friction for our advertisers, provide them with tools that deliver more impact while minimizing effort, and ultimately, deliver a better advertising experience for our customers.”

To that end, Amazon Ads has launched image generation in beta—a generative AI solution designed to remove creative barriers and enable brands to produce lifestyle imagery that helps improve their ads’ performance. For example, an advertiser may have standalone images of their product against a white background, like a toaster. When that same toaster is placed in a lifestyle context—on a kitchen counter, next to a croissant—in a mobile Sponsored Brands ad, click-through rates can be 40% higher compared to ads with standard product images.

“Providing tools to make image generation simple and easy is another way for us to support advertisers while also making the ads our customers see more engaging and visually rich,” said Aubrey. “It’s a perfect use for generative AI—less effort and better outcomes.”

This solution is helpful for advertisers of all sizes—enabling those that do not have in-house capabilities or agency support to more easily create brand-themed imagery, while also supporting bigger brands, who are constantly looking for ways to be more efficient around creative development. The image generation capability is easy to use and requires no technical expertise.

In the Amazon Ad Console, advertisers simply select their product and click Generate, with the tool leveraging generative AI to deliver a set of lifestyle and brand-themed images, based on product details, in a matter of seconds. The image can then be refined by entering short text prompts, while multiple versions can be quickly created and tested to optimize performance.

“With the launch of our image generation capability, any advertiser can now use a simple tool to create unique, lifestyle creative assets that make their campaigns more compelling, and at no additional cost,” said Aubrey.

Amazon Ads has started rolling out image generation to select advertisers and will expand availability over time. Amazon Ads will continue to improve the experience based on customer feedback.