By Nathan Jolly
Publication Date: 2026-01-29 00:11:00
A study conducted by four leading universities found that AI-generated advertising outperforms human creativity as long as it doesn’t look too artificial.
The study was conducted by Columbia University, Harvard University, Technical University of Munich and Carnegie Mellon University using data from Taboola’s performance marketing platform Realize.
Researchers analyzed live ad performance data from over 300,000 ads that generated over 500 million impressions and around 3 million clicks. To ensure robust data, researchers compared matched pairs of AI-generated and human-generated ads created by the same advertiser for the same campaign and with the same objectives.
“This approach isolated the impact of the creative generation method while simultaneously accounting for all other performance variables,” the report said.
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The study used so-called “sibling ads” to find out what makes people click
The key takeaway is that AI-generated ads can:
