What if your customers didn’t just receive a standard image, but a personal video message — delivered by an AI avatar that mentions their name, refers to their last purchase, and recommends a highly relevant product?
That’s exactly what was tested in a field experiment with 21,000+ customers in India. Each customer received one of three ad formats via WhatsApp:
A personalized video, generated by GenAI
A traditional personalized image
A non-personalized video
The results? Clear as day:
GenAI videos increased click rates by 6–9 percentage points compared to the other formats.
Why did it work?
A combination of relevance and format:
Video captures more attention than static images or text (Hayes, 2023; Tucker, 2015)
Personalized content is more effective — if it’s executed well (Goldfarb & Tucker, 2011)
But here’s the catch:
In some cases, the exact same technology backfired.
Same channel. Same AI. Different results.
→ In today’s premium edition of Ahead, you’ll learn:
What separates GenAI video success from failure
How human input was essential for performance
And how to test this in your own webshop, even without complex infrastructure
The tech is ready.
The results are promising.
👉 But the effect is only positive if you get one detail right.
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