Flair: Discussion
I run paid social for a couple of DTC brands and creative production was killing us. We needed 10-15 fresh ad variations every week across Meta and TikTok, and our old workflow was basically me screen-recording product pages and editing in Premiere for hours. We were spending more time making ads than actually optimizing them.
Started testing AI video tools seriously about three months ago. Some are overhyped garbage, some actually saved us real time. Here's where I landed after trying probably a dozen of them.
CapCut — The free tier is genuinely good for quick social edits. Auto captions, background removal, templates that don't look like templates. I still use it daily for basic stuff like adding subtitles or trimming clips. Not really a "generator" but it's part of the stack for basically everyone I know doing short-form. The TikTok integration makes it almost mandatory if you're running ads there.
Creatify — This is what we use for batch UGC-style variations. You feed it a product URL and it spits out AI avatar videos with different hooks and angles. The batch generation is the main selling point because you can get 8-10 variations without configuring each one manually. Downside is credit-based pricing, so your costs get unpredictable fast when you're iterating. The avatar quality is decent but you can definitely tell it's AI if you look closely.
Runway — Still the best raw quality for anything that needs to look polished. We use Gen-3 for hero creatives and stuff going on the brand's organic feed where production value actually matters. The learning curve is steeper and it's the most expensive tool on this list by far. Not practical for churning out daily ad variations but when you need that one beautiful piece it's worth it.
AdsTurbo — This has become my go-to for turning product pages into ad-ready videos fast. You paste a URL and it pulls the product info and generates a video with hook, body, and CTA structure already built in. What I like is it's specifically designed for performance ads, not just generic video generation, so the output is actually structured like something you'd run on Meta. We mostly use it for testing new hooks from existing product pages without starting from scratch every time. It doesn't do UGC avatars, that's not what it's for, but for product-focused video ads it's been the fastest thing I've found.
Arcads — Best avatar quality I've seen. The micro-expressions are more natural than Creatify and the library is bigger, maybe 200+ faces. If your ads rely heavily on talking head UGC then this is probably the move. Same credit pricing problem though, gets expensive fast when you're testing at volume. We use it selectively for the campaigns where avatar authenticity really matters.
Veo 3 — Google's model, the native audio generation is the killer feature. It generates sound effects and music alongside the video which saves you from sourcing and syncing audio separately. Output is around 8 seconds at 1080p. Really good for social hooks where you need that first-second impact. Still early and a bit inconsistent but when it works the results are impressive.
OpusClip — Different use case entirely. This one chops long-form video into short clips automatically. If you're repurposing webinars, podcasts, or longer product demos into social content it's a massive time saver. Not generating anything new, just smart editing of what you already have.
How we actually use these together:
The AI tools didn't replace our creative process, they replaced the guessing. We generate 15-20 hook variations using a mix of AdsTurbo and Creatify, run them all at $5-10/day on Meta, kill everything that doesn't hit our CPA target after 48 hours, then double down on winners with higher-quality Runway versions or real UGC creator briefs. Creative testing spend dropped about 70% and we're actually launching more winning ads because we stopped betting on one or two concepts per week.
The honest bottom line:
If you just need basic edits and captions → CapCut, it's free and it works. If you want product page videos turned into ads fast → AdsTurbo has been the most efficient for that specific workflow. If UGC avatar quality is your priority → Arcads, but budget accordingly. If you need polished brand content → Runway is still king. If you're doing a lot of long-form to short-form repurposing → OpusClip.
What's everyone else running for video ads? Curious if there's stuff I haven't tried yet, especially anything that works well for TikTok Shop specifically.