I built my business on my own ads. Then I let AI make some of them, and my lead costs dropped within 24 hours.
My B2B leads normally cost $15 to $20. Anything under $10 I call amazing. One of these AI ads scaled to $652 in spend at $5.96 a lead.
Here’s exactly how I make them, which tools I use and what I’d watch out for.
Judge ads by cost, not by looks
Everything in ads comes back to money in, money out. Look at your lead cost, your cost per application and your cost of acquisition.
Not how pretty the ad is.
My first AI ad is a voiceover over images with text overlays. On paper it looks weak. It got leads at $7.23, which isn’t my best but is still very good for B2B.
I also don’t read much into results under about $200 of spend. Past that, a good lead cost tends to hold.
Why this matters more than it looks
Cheaper leads don’t just save money. They change what’s possible in your business.
When a lead costs a third as much, the same budget buys three times the conversations. Your setters get more people to talk to, your closers get more calls and your sales go up without a bigger ad budget.
It also lets you test faster. You learn what works on less money, so you find winners sooner and kill losers before they cost you much.
Tool 1: Zebracat for fast, all in one ads
Zebracat is fast and it’s where a lot of my best performing ads have come from. Here’s the workflow.
- Choose the video length and select ad.
- Write a prompt. I usually generate it in ChatGPT first with my name, my credentials, the target audience and the call to action. For me that’s business owners stuck around $20k a month who need to build a team, and the CTA is to watch my VSL.
- Paste the prompt into Zebracat and generate the script. You’ll get two options of about 52 seconds each. Edit or regenerate them.
- Pick a visual style. I always choose realistic.
- Choose an AI suggested avatar. Custom characters need a paid plan, about $99 a month.
- Pick a voice style, energetic or inspiring, and a voice. Then generate.
It takes about five minutes. The imagery and text overlays are okay at best, and the finish is less polished. It still wins.
After that I’ll sometimes use ChatGPT to write the Facebook copy, though I usually write my own. Headline and copy matter, but they’re not the most important part. The video is.
Tool 2: Veo 3 for cinematic, realistic ads
Veo 3 is Google’s video model. The output is realistic, almost cinematic, and the characters actually speak.
The limitation is that every clip is 8 seconds. You need a paid Google plan, and you should use Veo 3 quality, not fast.
The workflow:
- Use ChatGPT to break your ad concept into three scenes.
- Paste each scene into Google Flow. Each prompt gives you four 8 second videos.
- Splice the best clips together in an editor like ScreenFlow or Canva.
The clips don’t always flow perfectly together. Text inside Veo 3 output often looks bad too, and in my tests ads with text across the whole frame did worse.
I also tried putting a whole script into one Flow project. It squeezed everything into one short ad, which isn’t good for longer, more detailed ads. The better your input, the better your output.
Fix the character consistency problem
The biggest challenge with Veo 3 is keeping the same face across clips. A short description won’t do it.
Write a detailed character description instead. Mine looked like this: a white male, 50 years old, silver blonde hair, light gray stubble with gray streaks.
With that level of detail I got a much closer match across clips, then downloaded and spliced them together.
What worked for a client
One of my life coaching clients ran an AI ad with a testimonial style script. A coach who was failing discovers the authority funnel, goes from zero to $50k a month while keeping a day job and wins an award.
That ad was much better than the quick Zebracat style, and it was way harder to make. It’s also what got the client their result. I used the detailed character description technique to build it.
What makes these ads convert
The tool matters less than the message. The ads that work all have:
- A strong hook
- A clear pain point, like being stuck at $20k a month
- A clear call to action
Then you test and let the lead cost tell you the truth. Your opinion of the ad doesn’t matter. The market’s opinion, measured in dollars per lead, is the only one that counts.
The takeaway
Zebracat is faster and more reliable. Veo 3 looks more real but needs stitching and character work. Use both, and judge every ad on lead cost.
If AI ads take my lead cost from around $15 down to around $5, that means roughly three times the leads, calls and sales for the same budget. That’s why I’m leaning into this.
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