AI is in a classic hype cycle. That’s not to downplay its value or say that it’s all vapor. In fact there’s a lot more tangible value in AI than past hype cycles. As it often goes with hype cycles, the emerging tech in question is real and valuable… it just happens to be oversubscribed in early days (now).

That can only mean one thing: a looming shakeout. After a correction, AI will live on… but at a smaller scale (though still substantial), applied to a more refined set of business functions. That contrasts its current orientation where it’s thrown at everything to see where it sticks and plugged in every pitch deck.

So what are the areas where AI will establish firm roots? We’re starting to see several, with common attributes such as tangible reduction in enterprise time and headaches. Whenever you can save executives time and stress, there’s often gold in those hills. That’s where AI will live on.

For example, we’re talking about automating rote aspects of business operations – think: bookkeeping or SEO maintenance, such as devising image alt tags. Similar automation applies to creative endeavors such as video production – always desired but reserved for savvy SMBs with production time and skill.

That last part is where Creatify lives. The company tackles the longstanding challenge of SMB video marketing. The proposal to automate video production has emerged in a few cycles over the past few decades – especially for time-starved and tech-challenged SMBs. Has Creatify cracked the code?

We had the chance to catch up with founder & CEO Ben Pashman to find out. Pashman will join us in about 5 days at L25 so we wanted to dig deeper as a primer for his appearance on stage. We hope to see you there, and here’s part 2 of our interview with Pashman to get the gears turning. See part 1 here.

Q&A with Ben Pashman, Part II

Tell us a bit more about your business model. How is it packaged and priced? Who pays you and how do they engage? Is it a self-serve product or is it sold? And if the latter, direct or through channel partners?

All of the above but let me explain in more detail

Advertisers, agencies and any content creator can engage with us in one of three ways. 

• Self-serve 
  • Starter package begins at $39 per/mo
  • Pro package (more features and support) starts at $99/ mo 
  • Enterprise team plans for unlimited usage sold on a seat license basis 
• Manage service – We’ll build anywhere from 10 – 100 ads per month and charge accordingly
• API / white label – this is where agencies or platforms that already cater to large quantities of SMBs can white label any/all of the functionality in our platform onto their own sites or internal workflows. This is a very popular option and we believe will be the largest business multiplier for us in the future. 

Do you see this as broadly applicable or vertical-specific in terms of your go-to-market strategy? Even if it’s more horizontal, are there any particular verticals that you see outsized demand or unmet opportunity?

The blessing and the curse is that the TAM for AI video ads is massive. Our starting point is any advertiser does paid social or CTV ads or wants to. That is obviously millions of companies. If I were to narrow that down in order to realistically execute a GTM plan I’d say that SMB is 100% the best fit for our product currently. As we touched on above, SMB is simply challenged when it comes to producing effective video ads at scale for so many reasons. Specifically, we are seeing great traction in Real Estate, Home Services, financial services, auto dealerships as well as performance marketing categories such as iGaming and app install although I realize these aren’t traditional SMBs. 

As a smaller startup that is lacking the traditional army or salespeople I am focused on doing API integration deals with existing media platforms that are already working with thousands of SMBs at a time. Those platforms are typically selling social media ad packages and once they integrate with Creatify they’ll be able to offer video ads to 100% of their advertiser base. This is a really exciting prospect for all the parties. 

We’ve seen several companies emerge in the past few decades to bring SMBs’ lower-friction video marketing – everything from customized stock production (SpotRunner) to graphics-driven video marketing and even freelance marketplaces for pro production (Fivver). How are you differentiating from past efforts?

I’d say we aim to integrate with all of those legacy players so their end users will have the ability to build video ads at scale (we happen to be talking to both of the ones you mentioned) It’s not a perfect analogy but if you think about what Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO) did for display ads, we are doing that for video. You literally can build hundreds or even thousands of video ads at less cost and for less time than it takes you now to build a single video ad. 

It seems that your approach is well timed given the underlying capabilities that have been unlocked in recent history through gen AI. Why is now the right time for what you’re building?

We’re officially in the era of AI. History will prove it to be an even bigger innovation than the internet itself. We’ll all be faced with the decision to either join the AI revolution or get run over by it. I’m not trying to instill fear into the system, that just how I see things playing out. 

Beyond the current timeframe and underlying tech that propels you. Are there any projected trends that will continue to accelerate your product? That could be projected usage/demand trends or how your road map will be enabled by step functions in AI evolution.

In this new AI era product acceleration isn’t only expected, it’s mandatory if you expect to remain a leader in the space. Our proprietary AI models are benefitting greatly from our current scale and projected growth. The quality of the AI avatars are getting better every month. The hand gestures, the lip syncing the more than 30 languages and the accents for each are all getting more life-like all the time. 

Beyond those macro factors – moving more into the micro – what are you working on now that you’re most excited about and what can we expect from Creatify in 2025… At least that you can talk about?

Creatify is committed to being the leading AI video ads platform. That means building an entire enterprise suite including ads production, optimization, analytics and ads intelligence. We already have features in our platform that allow our customers to view leading ads in their category to inspire new creative ideas. You can also track your competitors’ ads. If you are a smaller brand you can see what all the big boys are doing in real time with their top-performing video ads. In the future, we’ll make it very easy for smaller brands to replicate those ads with their own brand assets. There’s great value in being the best video ads creation engine but there’s even more value if we can provide intelligence and recommendations on how to build the best-performing ads.

Header image credit: Sam McGhee on Unsplash