u/Asleep-Comparison782

So I've been freelancing for this local locksmith for a few months doing basic social media management. Yesterday he hits me up and says he wants to get on real tv (streaming basically) cause he saw a competitor doing it, but he only wants to sink like $100 or $150 into the ad spend to test. Yes, I know that's nothing.

I told him as much but then I started digging into self serve stuff. I've been messing around with adwave because they have a tool that pulls assets from a url to build the creative for you which is the only way this would even be profitable for me to set up. I'm also looking at vibe or might just stick to youtube ads, but he's really obsessed about the tv idea. My main concern is that if I just use AI generated clips, it's going to look pretty bad..not really worried about not getting a lot of sales from this since I already warned him (lowkey want to throw in his face that I was right lol)

Has anyone here run these instant AI commercials on a real streaming service? And how do you guys manage client expectations when they have such a small budget?

We're trying to promote a small music festival and have almost zero budget. We decided to test some 15s streaming ads through adwave using just a montage of our IG pics. Our site traffic definitely spiked right when the ads aired which was great but ticket sales are still flat..

Has anyone used streaming ads for events like this? im just not sure if ppl ever buy tickets after seeing a tv spot or if it's just background noise for them. Should I give it more time to see real sales or do you think it's not worth it unless I have a huge budget to play around with?

Small ecommerce biz here, had $600 to play with CTV ads. Went on Adwave, targeted two states plus local DMA, and ran a 30s product demo ad. After 2 weeks, I got a report: thousands of impressions but I only counted like 2 or 3 direct sales so far.

My gut says maybe we aimed too wide with low budget. Should I have just targeted our city or some zip codes? For such a tiny spend, is it better to cast a wide net (brand awareness) or go hyper-local? Any thoughts from others who used teeny budgets on TV?

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I've been messing around with a few AI video tools lately, mostly trying to see if I can stop paying my video editor for every little thing (I know...AI taking everyone's jobs, but it IS way cheaper).

Lumen5 is one of them, and I also tried Adwave and a couple others. its been kinda hit or miss tbh like yeah it's fast, but sometimes the footage it picks is just random lol

but for more top-of-funnel type stuff I'm starting to wonder if it even matters that much?
anyone here made the switch to AI-generated ads yet? did it actually matter or no one really noticed?

how much time do you guys spend on marketing if you're running a small business with just one partner? we run woodworking biz and I'm handling most of the marketing but I barely have like 2 hours a week for it. right now it's mostly just IG and Tiktok posts.

I've been trying to move into something more automated, like video ads, been checking a few tools like InVideo AI and Adwave (both seem affordable) and also thought about using something like AdRoll for retargeting (Thoughts?)

My issue is I don't know if this would be too much for one person to handle, like is this manageable solo or does it turn into a whole thing? I have a bit of a tech background so I can probably figure it out but not sure how much time would be consumed for creation + monitoring the results

TLDR: how much time do you guys spend per week once ads are up and running? and did you end up doing it yourself or just hiring someone?

Hi everyone, we run a small restaurant (3 founders) and we're a bit split on how to market it. like we really don’t want to turn into one of those places that just relies on discounts to bring people in, we'd rather people come for the food and the vibe (it's a super cool place!)

one of the founders is pushing meta ads and bringing local food bloggers which I don't fully disagree with, but I've been thinking more about just filming what actually happens in the restaurant.. kitchen, prep, service, that kind of stuff instead of just posting food pics all the time because I've seen other places do that and it works

buttt the execution part is where we're stuck, either we use some AI video tools like adwave or invideo AI (lmk if you have any other recommendations here too) to just turn whatever footage we have into short ads or we actually hire someone to shoot/edit a proper set of like 3-4 videos and build a real campaign out of it

I want to know what would work for customers more (btw it's international cuisine), I'd love to know your opinion..

I've been trying to pivot our strategy from pushy ads to helpful content, but they aren't getting many views..

We started testing some low-fi video snippets of our process instead of polished promos. I've been trying tools like Adwave and Vibe to turn some of our long-form blog guides into quick 15s vids/ads for streaming, and the traffic quality is decent so far.

Has anyone else found a way that works for distributing content without making it super generic?

Our CAC on Meta and Google has been creeping up for a while, so we’ve started looking into CTV to diversify a bit.

I've been struggling since most platforms feel either too small-budget friendly or they push you straight into managed services, which kind of defeats the point if you’re trying to stay hands-on...

So far we’ve been testing things more on the self-serve side like Vibe and Adwave since they make it easier to move fast and see what’s actually happening without too much setup overhead. We’re trying small geo holdouts first to see if there’s real lift before scaling, and mixing 15s and 30s to keep creative fresh and control the costs...

Has any of you scaled CTV in a self-serve way without relying on an agency. What held up when the budget got bigger? appreciate the help 😄

Has anyone here tried running smaller CTV campaigns lately? feels like most of these platforms are built for bigger budgets. Stuff like MNTN, Vibe, etc..the minimums alone make it hard to even test (I did hear bad things about mntn tho)

Tbf the budget isnt even the main issue. The creative side is kind of a pain too. Trying to make ads that actually work without having enough spend to test different versions is rough. Then once you launch, the reporting gets confusing if you're not already deep into programmatic, how are you guys handling this?

Anyone figured out a decent way to test CTV on a smaller budget and still get something useful out of it?

our CAC on meta and google has been creeping up for a while so we’ve started looking into CTV to diversify a bit. the issue is most platforms feel either too small-budget friendly or they push you straight into managed services, which kind of defeats the point if you’re trying to stay hands-on...we’ve been testing things more on the self-serve side like vibe and adwave since they make it easier to move fast and see what’s happening without too much setup overhead (and aslo a colleague recommended trying those but feel free to recommend others too)

we’re trying small geo holdouts first to see if there’s real lift before scaling anything, and mixing 15s and 30s to keep creative fresh and control the costs

has anyone here scaled CTV in a self-serve way without relying on an agency? what actually held up when the budget got bigger? thanks for the helpp :)