How one can Make Product Adverts With AI for TikTok and YouTube—For (Virtually) Free – Decrypt

TikTok Store, the ecommerce platform that permits customers to purchase and promote issues straight on TikTok, moved $64.3 billion in merchandise in 2025, practically doubling from the 12 months earlier than. The U.S. alone accounted for $15.1 billion of that, and most of it was pushed by brief, low cost, face-to-camera movies of somebody holding a product and telling you why you want it.

These movies used to require an individual, a telephone, first rate lighting, and several other takes.

Lately, although, all you want is a product picture and three AI instruments—most of which can be found at no cost. This is a whole workflow, step-by-step, no technical background required, so you can begin your advertising and marketing empire.

Step 1: Get a clear product picture

Earlier than the rest, you will need to know what you need to promote. For this, you’ve got a couple of choices: Both select one thing you’re enthusiastic about, or just go forward and discover the most well liked objects on the TikTok store and obtain no matter you suppose will click on.

Obtain a photograph of the product you need to promote—a bit of clothes, an adjunct, a gadget, no matter. If you happen to’re promoting a selected product or are affiliated to an organization then use your personal provider images. Then crop the picture so solely the product is seen, with no mannequin, no background litter, and no watermarks.

In our examples, we picked this inexperienced high for TikTok (vertical format) and this Ledger crypto pockets for YouTube (horizontal format).

That crop issues greater than it may appear. The AI will deal with this picture because the supply of fact for the product, so the cleaner the reference, the extra devoted the consequence.

Step 2: Put a mannequin in your product

This step is essential in case you are selling clothes and niknaks since they contain a extra human method.

Open ChatGPT and add the cropped picture. You need GPT Picture 2 for this step—in Decrypt‘s personal head-to-head testing, it beat Google’s Nano Banana 2 on photorealism and product constancy, which is strictly what an AI-generated advert must not look pretend.

Then think about the surroundings you need for the advert, and switch it into a fast immediate.

You need to use one thing like this: “Generate a vertical 9:16 picture of a Latina lady in her late 20s sporting this actual garment, posing for an off-the-cuff smartphone picture in a vivid condo. Protect each attribute of the product precisely as proven within the reference picture: form, proportions, shade, cloth texture, stitching, and match. Don’t redesign, recolor, or alter the product in any method.”

We bought one thing like this:

Swap the demographic particulars—ethnicity, age, physique sort—to match whoever your audience really is. Change the setting the identical method: a gymnasium for activewear, a café for equipment, a road nook for streetwear. For non-clothing merchandise, exchange “sporting” with “holding” or “utilizing.”

Need the mannequin someplace particular? Add a second picture of the placement and ask ChatGPT to put the topic of picture one inside picture two. Right here is our topic in an area station, simply because.

This trick additionally works with Google’s Nano Banana 2, which handles compositing properly. Reve is a far cheaper various, but it surely tends to drop immediate particulars, so product accuracy could undergo.

Step 3: Ask ChatGPT for the script—in JSON

Now you want a script for a 10-second video. Do not write it your self; make ChatGPT do the advertising and marketing considering. One thing like this will work, however be as detailed as you may in what you ask:

“Act as a senior direct-response marketer. Write a 10-second script in English for a UGC-style video the place the girl within the hooked up picture talks to the digicam and sells the hooked up product. The copy should sound pure and spoken, hook the viewer within the first two seconds, point out that the worth is $20, and shut with the decision to motion ‘faucet the buying cart under.’ Output the script as JSON formatted for Google Stream, with a timeline describing what occurs on display screen, the digicam conduct, and the precise dialogue for every phase of the ten seconds.”

The JSON format will not be ornament. Video fashions, particularly from Google, observe structured timelines way more precisely than free paragraphs, so that you get the dialogue, gestures, and beats you requested for. One warning: evaluation the output, as a result of it may be so literal that if the timeline ends at second eight, the mannequin could repeat an motion to fill the remaining two seconds.

If you would like you may personalize the copy per platform. Within the immediate, ask the AI to say issues like “The most effective high I’ve seen on my TikTok feed.” If you wish to swap social media, “tiktok feed” turns into “on X,” “in my Reels,” or “on Shorts” relying on the place it runs. The decision to motion adjustments too: the buying cart works on TikTok, “hyperlink in bio” matches Instagram, and “test the pinned remark” fits YouTube.

Step 4: Generate the video in Google Stream

Go to Google Stream and choose Gemini Omni, the mannequin Google launched at I/O 2026 in Could. It generates clips of as much as 10 seconds with native audio—which means your mannequin really speaks the dialogue—and it accepts reference photos, which is the entire level right here.

Google Veo works, and will arguably be higher, however Omni is cheaper… and we like low cost.

Add each information as references: the generated picture of your mannequin and the cropped product close-up. Paste the JSON into the immediate field. Choose vertical 9:16 for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, or horizontal 16:9 for normal YouTube movies and pre-roll adverts.

Now, the cash half. Stream provides non-subscribers 50 free credit per day, however Google’s assist docs prohibit these to the Veo 3.1 fashions.

Omni in Stream (which is the mannequin we suggest) requires a paid Google AI plan. Plus ($7.99 a month) consists of 200 month-to-month credit, Professional ($19.99) consists of 1,000, and the 2 Extremely tiers carry 10,000 and 25,000.

There is a genuinely free backdoor, although: Google made Omni accessible without charge inside YouTube Shorts and the YouTube Create app for customers 18 and older. And for reference, the developer API costs Omni at roughly $0.10 per second of video—a couple of greenback per clip.

Each Omni video carries Google’s invisible SynthID watermark figuring out it as AI-generated. It will not present on display screen, however platforms can detect it, so do not plan a enterprise round pretending the footage is actual.

Right here is the Ledger advert video we bought. Bear in mind, video era has numerous a random elements as a result of creativity is vital for these fashions to work. If you happen to don’t like the primary era, attempt a couple of extra occasions.

If you happen to discover some irregularities that may be fastened in publish, then there’s no have to spend further credit. There are free instruments that may allow you to lower components of the video, change lighting, shade, and so on.

For instance, on this Tiktok advert, the girl repeats the decision to motion. We have to change that, and also you’ll learn how within the subsequent step

Step 5: Polish it in CapCut

Export the clip and open it in CapCut. That is the place you trim anomalies—AI video nonetheless produces the occasional further phrase or looping gesture—and lower the clip to precisely what you need earlier than exporting straight to your social accounts.

Subtitles are the one function value listening to. The animated, word-by-word caption kinds that dominate TikTok sit behind CapCut Professional, which runs about $7.99 a month or $59.99 a 12 months, and the free tier caps automated captions. Guide textual content stays free, so for those who’re affected person, you may sort your personal.

The Tiktok advert ended up trying like this after we fastened the decision to motion:

Happening the rabbit gap

This workflow produces acceptable outcomes, not agency-grade ones. As soon as it clicks, you may need extra management: ElevenLabs for a constant model voice throughout dozens of movies, Kling for persistent AI avatars and instruments for movement management, node-based workflows like ComfyUI for granular scene management, n8n for automation, and so on.

Every provides value and complexity, however the fundamental pipeline above is sufficient to check whether or not a product sells earlier than spending something severe.

Promoting on TikTok Store doesn’t require an excessive amount of in your facet—simply being 18 or older with a authorities ID and financial institution particulars that match your registration, and approval often lands inside three days. TikTok takes a 6% referral charge on most orders. Selling different folks’s merchandise as an affiliate requires 1,000 followers to use, and full entry takes 5,000 followers plus 30 days in this system.

YouTube dropped the barrier even decrease: In March, its Procuring Associates program opened to Accomplice Program creators with simply 500 subscribers throughout 12 international locations, together with the U.S. and Brazil.

Each TikTok and YouTube allow AI-generated promotional movies, however creators and advertisers should disclose how the content material was made and any business relationship behind it. Underneath TikTok’s AI-generated-content coverage, real looking AI-generated photos, audio or video should be labeled; advertisers operating non-Spark adverts should additionally activate the “This advert accommodates AI-generated content material” possibility in TikTok Adverts Supervisor, whereas anybody selling a model, services or products should activate TikTok’s commercial-content disclosure setting.

YouTube equally requires creators to pick “Sure” beneath “AI use” when a video accommodates real looking content material generated or meaningfully altered with AI, after which YouTube applies an AI label; sponsored, endorsed or in any other case commercially influenced movies should individually use the platform’s paid-promotion disclosure.

X’s Authenticity coverage prohibits artificial or manipulated media when it’s deceptively introduced and will trigger widespread confusion, threaten public security or produce severe hurt, whereas its promoting guidelines require adverts to be trustworthy, lawful and according to the product being promoted. It doesn’t explicitly ban the usage of AI-generated photos, video, and audio in promotional content material.

However allow us to put your toes on the bottom with a sobering quantity earlier than you stop your job: Per Camille Moore, president of the advertising and marketing company Third Eye Insights, of the 803,500 TikTok Store shops working within the U.S. final 12 months, greater than half recorded zero gross sales. The instruments are practically free. The competitors will not be.