Best AI Commercials: How They Were Really Made (2026)

The best known AI commercials are Coca-Cola’s Holidays Are Coming, the Toys R Us Sora film, Kalshi’s NBA Finals spot, Under Armour’s Anthony Joshua ad, and Heinz A.I. Ketchup. Almost none were made the way the coverage suggests. Every celebrated example kept humans in the pipeline, the famous cost figures leave out the people who were paid, and at least one canonical entry is not AI at all.

You have probably seen the list. A prediction market app made a national ad for $2,000. Two directors made a Liquid Death spot for $800. The conclusion writes itself: the floor fell out, and anyone can do this now.

The conclusion is wrong, and it is wrong in a specific and consistent direction. Every widely repeated number about these ads understates how much human work went in, because the human work is the part that does not make a headline.

This walks through what each notable AI commercial actually used AI for, verified against the primary sources, and what the pattern means if your budget looks nothing like Coca-Cola’s.

Key Takeaways

• The “$2,000 NBA Finals ad” is not a total cost. Kalshi’s Jack Such told NPR the “actual cost of prompting the AI” was under $2,000. Kalshi declined to disclose the director’s fee, and the director says he is “paid very well” and charges five figures (npr.org, businessinsider.com, June 2025).
• The honest Kalshi comparison is five figures against six or seven. It went generative after production quotes came back “in the six or seven figure range” (businessinsider.com, June 2025). A large saving. Not $2,000.
• The most celebrated spots used AI to explore, then paid humans to finish. Google Creative Lab built storyboards with Veo 3, then hired human directors to shoot the final ads (campaignlive.com, September 2025).
• OpenAI’s own Super Bowl ad was made by human artists. Sora only prototyped it. Its CMO called the spot “a celebration of human creativity” (theverge.com, February 2025).
• Airbnb’s “AI-looking” diorama ads are not AI. They are 3D and cel animation by the studio BUCK, with 100 plus credited human artists (buck.co, thedrum.com, August 2023).
• The model behind the famous 2025 ads is gone. Google lists Veo 3 as deprecated with a June 30, 2026 shutdown (ai.google.dev, July 2026). The canon is already historical.

What counts as an AI commercial?

An AI commercial is any ad where generative models did meaningful production work. In practice there are three pipelines. Fully generated, where the model produces the finished footage. Hybrid, where AI handles exploration, storyboards, or gap-filling and humans shoot and finish. And localization, where one filmed master is adapted by AI into other languages or variants. Most famous examples are hybrid, though they get reported as the first kind.

That distinction decides what a given ad proves. A fully generated spot proves a model can hold a shot. A hybrid spot proves a workflow saved a week. The coverage rarely separates them. For the tooling underneath, see our breakdown of what an AI ad generator actually is.

The two ads that reset what a commercial can cost

Two 2025 spots did the real work of shifting expectations, both made with Google’s Veo 3.

Kalshi’s NBA Finals ad aired in the YouTube TV stream of Game 3 on June 11, 2025. Creator PJ Accetturo produced it with Veo 3, running 300 to 400 generations to get roughly 15 usable clips, and Kalshi confirmed to Business Insider that it was “generated entirely using Veo 3” (businessinsider.com, June 2025). It passed three million views on Kalshi’s X account within a week (npr.org, June 2025).

Then there is the number. Kalshi’s Jack Such told NPR that “the actual cost of prompting the AI, what is being used in lieu of studios, directors, actors, etc., was under $2,000” (npr.org, June 2025). That sentence has been compressed into “the ad cost $2,000” nearly everywhere. Such declined to disclose Accetturo’s fee. Accetturo told Business Insider he was “paid very well for the project” and makes “a lot more as an AI director” than on live-action contracts. Media buy is excluded too.

Accetturo’s own caveat is the one worth keeping: “Just because this was cheap doesn’t mean anyone can do it” (npr.org, June 2025).

The Liquid Death spot is the other half of the myth, and it needs a correction before anything else. It was never a Liquid Death ad. It is an unofficial spec film by the directing duo Too Short For Modeling, Noam Sharon and Tal Rosenthal, with creative direction from Amir Ariely, carrying its own disclaimer that it is “not affiliated with Liquid Death” and that no commercial use was intended (broadcastnow.co.uk, July 2025). It never aired and no brand commissioned it.

The $800 in Veo 3 credits is real and sourced. The timeline is not settled: Ariely says about two weeks from idea to finished product, while Sharon publicly said about seven days. Take it as proof of output quality, which it genuinely is. It proves nothing about what a brand pays, because no brand paid.

For what the models themselves charge per second today, we broke that down in AI video generation cost.

What the celebrated AI ads actually used AI for

Here is the pattern that survives contact with the sources. In almost every landmark spot, AI did the exploring and humans did the finishing.

Toys R Us went from concept to final in a few weeks with Sora, cutting “hundreds of iterative shots down to a couple dozen,” and still added corrective VFX and an original score (prnewswire.com, June 2024). Director Nik Kleverov was candid about the hit rate: “Sometimes you would create something that was almost right and other times not so right.”

Google’s Vanilla spot is the clearest statement of the hybrid model, because Google was using its own model. Creative Lab used Veo 3 to design storyboards, then hired the director duo Matias and Mathias to shoot the finished ad (campaignlive.com, September 2025). The published production credits do not mention Veo or AI anywhere. You only learn about it from the interview.

Under Armour shows what happens when the human part goes uncredited. Director Wes Walker described a pipeline combining “Ai video, Ai photo, 3D CGI, 2D VFX, Motion graphics, 35mm film, digital video and advances in Ai voiceover,” delivered in about four weeks (techcrunch.com, March 2024). Director Gustav Johansson then pointed out publicly that the athlete footage came from a commercial he had directed two years earlier, shot by DP André Chemetoff, with neither credited: “Cool film, But all the stuff with athlete is shot by André Chemetoff and from a commercial I did?” Credits were later added under “licensed footage” (euronews.com, March 2024).

Read that pipeline list again. The 35mm film in the AI-powered ad was the part someone else shot.

The ads that got punished, and what they had in common

Two campaigns account for most of the backlash, and they share a trait.

Coca-Cola remade Holidays Are Coming with generative AI in November 2024, built by Secret Level, Silverside AI, and The Wild Card. Reception was, per Muse by Clio, “for the most part, harsh,” with the spot called dystopian and hollow (musebyclios.com, November 2024). Coke ran it again in 2025 with Secret Level and Silverside, where five AI specialists prompted and refined more than 70,000 clips in about a month (futurism.com, November 2025). The Verge called the result “a sloppy eyesore” (theverge.com, November 2025).

Coke’s Pratik Thakar defended it on the record: “Last year people criticized the craftsmanship. But this year the craftsmanship is ten times better” (hollywoodreporter.com, November 2025).

Progressive launched an AI-generated spot with animals driving in November 2025, keeping Stephanie Courtney’s Flo voiceover human. Marketing Dive reported the YouTube video drew predominantly negative comments, and quoted the brand’s counter: “We did get comments about the creative, but we also got really strong engagement with the work” (marketingdive.com, February 2026). Progressive chose animals over humans deliberately to sidestep the uncanny valley, and it still landed badly.

The shared trait is not that these ads used AI. Kalshi used more AI than either and was celebrated. The shared trait is that AI was pointed at the craft: the warmth, the performance, the thing the audience came for. That is the part people notice being removed. Our guide to images that do not read as machine-made covers the same failure at the frame level, and AI cinematic ad styles covers the looks that survive it.

The famous AI commercials that are not AI

This is where most lists break, including the ones ranking for this query today.

Airbnb’s diorama ads are not AI. The campaign is “Get an Airbnb,” launched August 2023, made in-house with the animation studio BUCK using 3D and cel animation (thedrum.com, August 2023). BUCK credits more than 100 named human artists, and its creative director describes the pipeline: high-resolution tree models, leaf clusters generated procedurally in Houdini, animation in Maya (buck.co). The stylized look reads as AI to people primed to see AI. It is a conventional VFX production. The “Airbnb or A.I.bnb” concept often attributed to the brand is a 2023 student spec project, never commissioned or run by Airbnb.

The AI labs advertise with human crews. OpenAI’s “The Intelligence Age” ran at Super Bowl LIX in February 2025, a 60-second pointillism-inspired 3D spot via Accenture Song. The Verge reported that “while OpenAI’s text-to-video AI Sora was used during conception to rapidly prototype ideas and explore different camera treatments, the final animation was created entirely by human artists.” CMO Kate Rouch: “This is a celebration of human creativity and an extension of human creativity” (theverge.com, February 2025).

Anthropic’s first brand campaign, “Keep Thinking With Claude,” ran in September 2025 through the agency Mother, a 90-second film directed by Daniel Wolfe with music by MF DOOM (adage.com, creative.salon, September 2025). Neither company has said whether AI was used in production. What is on the record is a full live-action crew: cinematographer, production designer, editors, colorist, VFX studio.

When the two companies with the most to gain from showing off generative video made their flagship brand films, they hired human artists.

The quiet uses that actually pay

The interesting AI advertising in 2025 and 2026 is not on any best-of list, because it is not a hero film.

Trivago announced Jürgen Klopp as brand ambassador in October 2024 with a model built for repetition: “a master spot recorded in English, which can then be localized into different languages using advanced AI technology” (trivago investor relations, October 2024). It reached nearly 20 markets by February 2025 (skift.com, February 2025). One shoot, many markets, and no think pieces. The trade press that covered Coca-Cola’s spot at length did not cover this one at all.

Klarna used an AI avatar of CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski to deliver Q1 earnings highlights in May 2025. TechCrunch noted it was not obvious, with only subtle tells like reduced blinking (techcrunch.com, May 2025).

Google then went the other way. Its “Just Ask Google” Thanksgiving turkey ad, running from late October 2025, was its first fully AI-generated TV ad, made end to end with Veo 3 and no director shoot, promoting AI Mode in Search rather than Pixel. Google Creative Lab’s Robert Wong told the Wall Street Journal the ad deliberately carries no AI label: “Consumers don’t care whether an ad was made with AI or not” (mediapost.com, 9to5google.com, October 2025).

That was one month after Google’s own team was hiring human directors to finish Veo storyboards. The same company ran both workflows in the same quarter, which is a fair signal that nobody has settled this.

What this means if you are not Coca-Cola

Almost everything above is a hero spot: one film, big brand, judged on craft. If that is not your job, the canon is the wrong benchmark, and copying it is the wrong instinct.

The pattern that holds across every sourced example is a split. AI got punished when it replaced craft. It got ignored, in the good way, when it replaced repetition. Trivago’s localization, Klarna’s avatar, and Google’s storyboards all pointed AI at work nobody was going to admire anyway. Coca-Cola and Progressive pointed it at the warmth.

For most brands the repetition is where the money is. Not one hero film, but the fortieth variant of a product shot, the same ad resized for four placements, the next drop needing what the last drop needed. That work is invisible, unglamorous, and constant, and it never makes a list.

That is the work DesignerBox is built for. One product photo becomes the campaign: product stills, on-model shots, video ads, and social creative, with every top image and video model on one bill instead of six. The Video Ad Composer turns a product photo into an ad without a shoot, and a workflow you save reruns for the next product instead of being rebuilt.

Two honest limits. Video is by far the most expensive operation, priced per second of output, so budget it separately from stills where an image costs 5 credits. And AI video needs the Premium plan or higher, while the commercial license starts at Pro. There is a free plan if you want to see the output on your own product first. Full details are on pricing and the model catalog.

One more thing worth knowing before you treat any of this as settled. Veo 3, the model behind both the Kalshi ad and the Liquid Death spec film, is marked deprecated on Google’s own pricing page with a June 30, 2026 shutdown date (ai.google.dev, July 2026).

The most cited AI commercials in history were made with a model you can no longer run. Anything you build a process on this year is on the same clock, which is an argument for workflows you can rerun on a different model rather than prompts tuned to one.

FAQ

What is the most famous AI commercial?

Kalshi’s NBA Finals ad, which aired in the YouTube TV stream of Game 3 on June 11, 2025. PJ Accetturo made it with Google’s Veo 3, generating 300 to 400 clips to get about 15 usable ones, and it passed three million views on Kalshi’s X account within a week (npr.org, June 2025). It became the standard reference for fast, low-cost AI video, though its widely quoted cost is incomplete.

How much does an AI commercial actually cost?

Less than the quoted figures suggest, and more than the headlines say. Kalshi’s under-$2,000 figure covers AI prompting only, excluding the director’s fee and media buy (npr.org, June 2025). The useful comparison is Kalshi’s own: it went generative after production quotes came back “in the six or seven figure range” (businessinsider.com, June 2025), and its AI director charges five figures. A real saving, an order of magnitude off the folklore.

Which AI model makes commercials?

Google’s Veo and OpenAI’s Sora dominate the known examples. Toys R Us used Sora, Kalshi used Veo 3, Under Armour used Runway alongside CGI, and Heinz used DALL-E 2 for images. Veo 3 itself is now deprecated with a June 30, 2026 shutdown (ai.google.dev, July 2026), so current work runs on newer versions. DesignerBox includes 13 image and video models, so the model is a per-shot choice.

Why do people dislike some AI commercials?

The backlash tracks what AI replaced, not whether AI was used. Coca-Cola and Progressive pointed generative video at the performance and warmth, and drew heavy criticism (theverge.com, marketingdive.com, 2025 and 2026). Kalshi used more AI and was praised. Ads that use AI for exploration, localization, or variants, and keep human craft on the parts audiences came for, rarely trigger it.

Are Airbnb’s ads AI-generated?

No. The diorama-style “Get an Airbnb” campaign launched in August 2023 and was animated by the studio BUCK using 3D and cel animation, with more than 100 credited human artists and a documented Houdini and Maya pipeline (thedrum.com, buck.co, 2023). Airbnb has not commented on AI use in them. The “Airbnb or A.I.bnb” idea often attributed to the brand is a 2023 student spec project.

Can a small brand make an AI commercial?

Yes, and the realistic version is not a hero film. The repeatable win is product-level creative at volume: video ads from a product photo, variants per placement, the same campaign rerun for the next drop. Around half of digital video advertisers were already building video ads with generative AI as of July 2025 (IAB, July 2025). Start with the work you repeat, not the work you would put on a showreel.

Every campaign above was verified against at least two sources as of July 2026, including NPR and Business Insider (Kalshi), PR Newswire (Toys R Us), TechCrunch and Euronews (Under Armour), Broadcast (Liquid Death), Campaign and MediaPost (Google), The Verge (OpenAI, Coca-Cola), Ad Age (Anthropic), Marketing Dive (Progressive), The Drum and BUCK (Airbnb), trivago investor relations and Skift (Trivago), and Google’s Gemini API pricing page (Veo deprecation). Several widely repeated claims are deliberately absent because they did not survive checking: Heinz’s 850 million impressions appears only in agency award-entry copy, no source names the model in Progressive’s spot or a language count for Trivago’s, and the reported “5,000 Midjourney images” behind a well-known sneaker ad traces to a single self-reported social post. Individual results vary.