AI VIDEO IS MAKING COMMERCIALS 10x CHEAPER. THAT'S THE TRAP.
Updated: 5 days ago
AI has dramatically decreased the cost of commercials. Here is the error that mid-sized brands are lured into by the low price, and how to better allocate the savings.
A brand owner called me last month asking for advice.. He had just gotten a quote for a batch of AI content, and the number was so low he read it to me twice to make sure I had caught it. "For what I used to pay for one," he said, "I can make twelve."
Then he asked the question this whole post is about. "So should I make twelve?"
I told him to hold the go for a second.
The trap of cost AI Commercials pricing decrease
While everyone was arguing about which AI Commercials generative model looks best, the AI commercial pricing fell off a cliff. Last month Higgsfield, one of the AI video companies, raised four hundred million dollars at a five point four billion dollar valuation, reportedly on around seven hundred million in yearly revenue.
That is not a company betting you will make one careful film a year. It is betting you will make a lot of video, fast, and pay less that traditional production each time.
And you can. A spot that cost thirty thousand dollars to shoot two years ago has a version today that costs a rounding error. That part is real, and the price is not going back up.
So the temptation writes itself. If one spot got you one result, twelve should get you twelve. Right?
And that’s where you can easily get trapped.
The enemy is not volume actually. It is content without creativity or strategy
I want to be precise here, because most advice gets lazy at this point and tells you to slow down and make one beautiful thing. That is not always true.
Big volume can serve good. Audiences are split across different channels, and a brand that can talk to each room in its own language has a real edge. One well-directed master film can become dozens of on-brand variants with no new shoot, no new crew, and a moderate budget line. That is the real gift of AI video, and any studio that tells you different is protecting its old day rate.
Making twelve is not the problem. Making twelve things that do not come from anywhere is.
Direction in AI video production is the one thing the discount left out
After telling the brand owner to hold the go, I took a step back and asked what the campaign actually needed. I wanted to understand the objective, the brand’s current position, and what the business needed at that moment.
Based on that, I proposed a different approach: start with a master graphic and a hero video to establish the campaign’s visual language and core message.
Then, instead of producing everything upfront, we would use the following content pieces for A/B testing. This allowed us to test different messages, formats, and creative directions, learn from audience behavior, and scale what actually worked.
The goal wasn’t to create more content. It was to make better decisions about what content to create. And that is how we saved costs in reality.
Here is what survived the price collapse. The camera got cheaper and having a crew got optional. The taste did not. Knowing how to build the story of these twelve pieces is the important part of the job. It always was. AI just stripped away every excuse that used to hide it.
There is a survey that gets quoted constantly in my world, and one finding stuck with me: when brands are asked what is holding back their results with AI video, the top answer is not budget. It is the skills. The tool is in everyone’s hands now. Knowing where to point it is the rare part.
Spend the budget in the right content pieces before guessing with the alogrithm
You saved budget with AI video production. Good. Do not hand it back to the algorithm as more guesses. Spend it on the part that got more valuable, not less: deciding what you are actually saying, who you are saying it to, and why they should care.
In practice this looks almost boring, but it works. One real strategy conversation that ends in the master idea, directed like it matters. Then, sure, twelve variants, because now there is something worth varying.
But sometimes guessing really is the right call
I will not pretend direction is always the answer, because it is not. If you are running pure performance social media ads and you do not yet know what your audience responds to, cheap volume is a testing tool, and a great one.
The line is simple. When you are searching, volume is research. When you are building a message, undirected volume is erosion.
Key Takeaways
AI video production is cheaper but that’s not the whole opportunity.
The real advantage is what the lower cost lets you do: explore more ideas, test more variations, and make better creative decisions.
You don’t need less content. You need meaningful content for your audience.
Creating twelve pieces can make perfect sense. The problem starts when those twelve pieces are completely out of your brand equity.
A/B testing becomes much more powerful when production is cheaper.
You can test different hooks, messages, formats, and creative directions without committing the entire budget upfront. Then put more behind what actually works.
AI doesn’t replace creative direction. It makes it more important.
The tools are becoming easier to access. Knowing what to make, what to change, and what is worth keeping is where the real value sits.
Think about your best option, not just cost savings.
The biggest opportunity in AI commercials and AI video production isn’t simply making the same content for less. It’s being able to experiment at a scale traditional production rarely allows.
And yes, sometimes twelve is exactly the right number.
When you’re using content to learn what your audience responds to, volume can be a strategy. Just know whether you’re creating to discover something or creating to communicate something you already know.
Etereo Creative Studio is a Los Angeles based creative studio producing AI powered cinematic commercials, brand films, and social content systems for mid size brands. We're filmmakers first. AI is our camera. Get in touch at hello@etereocreative.com
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