Leveling up with Pencil: Powering AI-generated ads with Adobe After Effects

With the mass pivot to eCommerce over the past 24 months, brands in Singapore are leaning heavily on online advertising to acquire new customers and expand their businesses. However, successful online advertising calls for massive volumes of on-brand, personalized content. And it is difficult for brands to create this content quickly and affordably without compromising on brand identity and creativity.

The success of brands’ online advertising, and by extension their businesses, hinges on their ability to develop quality content that captivates and converts customers. How, then, can brands meet their online marketing needs without compromising on creative quality?

Pencil, a Singapore-based creative AI start-up established in 2018, uses algorithms to help brands generate online advertising content. The platform doubles advertising performance with up to 10 times time and cost savings. During the pandemic, Pencil saw the need for automation and sustainability in creative jobs as companies began to shift advertising operations online. Rather than replacing creative teams, automated content generation provides them with the tools to operate at scale while eliminating repetitive tasks so they can focus on more conceptual projects that require creative and emotional intelligence.

Through creative automation, now with Adobe After Effects integration, Pencil is empowering creative teams to build relationships between brands and consumers at scale.

Powering higher production value AI content with Adobe After Effects capabilities

One of the main challenges of automated content generation is guaranteeing the production value of a final asset. Video techniques such as transitions, animations and effects are expected to be professional-grade as they can considerably affect aesthetic, customer engagement and, inevitably, return-on-advertising-spend (ROAS).

Before integrating Adobe After Effects, the creative team had to download assets from several different libraries, and Pencil detected visual inconsistencies in video content. Once Pencil onboarded Adobe After Effects, the results were immediately noticed. The visual quality of the AI advertisements generated were superior and aligned with the brands' visual identity, which continues to provide them with an additional edge over competitors who are not utilizing AI advertisements.

Will Hanschell, Co-Founder and CEO of Pencil said, “While the creative processes largely remained the same, we saw a vast improvement in productivity within the Pencil team as video assets are now more accessible and consistent. Better ideas are conceived through brainstorming sessions because we no longer need to focus on menial and time-consuming tasks like searching for the right animation.”

Improving creative workflows and kindling inspiration

The integration of Adobe After Effects into the Pencil platform enables professional creative teams already working with Adobe to seamlessly adopt AI content generation within their existing workflows. This benefits not only creatives but also small business owners who are now able to access professional grade advertising content at an affordable cost.

For creatives - whether they are a professional, a large brand marketer or a small business owner - the scale, quality, and performance of their creative work will be amplified with this integration between Pencil and Adobe After Effects.

Rob Carliner, Co-Founder of ecommerce brand Angela Caglia Skincare said, "Pencil is by far the best way to create winning video ads at scale. By combining Oscar-worthy AI editing software (powered by Adobe After Effects) with AI learning algorithms it effectively eliminates the guesswork out of what makes for winning ad creatives."

“Our decision to integrate Adobe After Effects in our platform was an easy one. Being able to provide professional-grade AI content was originally an internal challenge but we were able to turn that around effectively with Adobe After Effects network rendering. It has also allowed us to smoothen the collaborative processes and workflows of our creative users, who mostly work in teams, especially as remote work became the norm,” added Hanschell.

The future of advertisements lies in creativity, collaboration, and innovation. Creatives are ideating and constructing all the time, so the expectations lie in innovation. So, how can the advertising world embrace technology to produce the best outcomes for creative teams, agencies, brands, and their target audience?