How to Create Commercial Ads With AI for TikTok and YouTube – For (Almost) Free

TikTok Shop, an ecommerce platform that allows users to buy and sell products directly on TikTok, has been moved $64.3 billion in sales in 2025, almost twice as much as last year. The US alone had $15.1 billion of that, and most of it was driven by short, cheap, camera videos of someone holding a product and telling you why you want it.

Those videos required a person, a phone, proper lighting, and a few props.

Today, however, all you need is a product image and three AI tools—most of which are available for free. Here are all the steps, step by step, no technical skills required, so you can start your business.

Step 1: Find a blank image

Before anything else, you need to know what you want to sell. At this point, you have a few options: Choose what you like, or just go ahead and find the hottest things on the TikTok store and download whatever you think will click.

Upload a photo of the item you want to sell—a piece of clothing, an accessory, a tool, anything. If you are selling a product or are affiliated with a company, use your own photos. Then download the image so that only the object is visible, without the background, background blur, and watermarks.

In our examples, we chose TikTok green (vertical color) and YouTube’s Ledger crypto wallet (horizontal color).

That seed is more important than it seems. The AI ​​will see this image as the source of the truth of the object, so the cleaner it is, the more faithful the result.

Step 2: Put the model in your product

This is important if you are promoting clothing and accessories because they relate to people.

Open ChatGPT and upload the cropped image. You want it Image of GPT2 at this step-in DecryptIn a head-to-head test, it beat Google’s Nano Banana 2 on photorealism and ad fidelity, which is what AI-generated ads need to avoid looking fake.

Then figure out where you want the ad to be, and change it to make it faster.

You can use this: “Create a 9:16 portrait portrait of a Latina woman in her 20s wearing the exact same outfit, showing a normal smartphone image in a lighted house. Keep every aspect of the product exactly as shown in the photo description: shape, fit, color, fabric texture, stitching, and fit. Do not remodel, alter any color, or change any color.”

We have something like this:

Change the demographics – race, age, body type – to match your target audience. Change the look the same way: a gym for active wear, a restaurant for gear, a street corner for streetwear. For non-clothing items, replace “wear” with “hold” or “use.”

Need the pattern somewhere? Upload a second placeholder image and ask ChatGPT to place the title of one image inside the second image. Here is our story in space, because.

This trick also works with Google Nano Banana 2which effectively drives production. Dream it is the cheapest method, but it often leaves out details, so the accuracy of the data can be disturbed.

Step 3: Query ChatGPT for script-in JSON

Now you need a script for a 10-second video. Don’t write it yourself; make ChatGPT think of business. Something like this would work, but be as specific as possible about what you’re asking:

“Be a direct marketer. Write a 10-second script in English for a UGC-type video where the woman in the attached image speaks to the camera and sells the attached product. The clip should sound natural and spoken, connect the viewer in the first two seconds, mention that the price is $20, and close with a call to action ‘win a shopping cart.’ Output the script as a JSON format for Google Flow, with a timed description of what happens on the screen, camera view, and real-time dialogue in every 10-second session.”

The JSON format is not decorative. Videos, especially from Google, follow a fixed period of time more accurately than loose passages, so you get the dialogue, gestures, and beats you asked for. One caveat: look at the output, because it can be so real that if the timer runs out on the eighth, the model can repeat the action to fill the remaining two seconds.

If you want you can change your settings on the platform. Quickly, ask the AI ​​to say things like “The best I’ve seen on my TikTok feed.” If you want to change the social network, the “tiktok feed” is “on X,” “in my Reels,” or “on Shorts” depending on where it goes. The call to action also changes: the shopping cart works on TikTok, the “bio link” is compatible with Instagram, and the “view what’s published” is compatible with YouTube.

Step 4: Create a video in Google Flow

Go to Google Flow and select it Gemini Whoa version of Google that was launched at I/O 2026 in May. It creates recordings of up to 10 seconds with native audio – meaning your brand speaks in the conversation – and accepts photos, which is the whole point.

Google Veo works, and could probably be better, but Omni is cheap… and we love cheap.

Upload all files as references: a generated image of your model and a close-up object. Paste the JSON into the prompt box. Choose vertical 9:16 for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, or horizontal 16:9 for regular YouTube videos and commercials.

Now, the money part. Flow offers non-subscribers 50 free credits per day, but Google does help docs apply it to Veo 3.1 models.

Omni in Flow (which is the model we recommend) requires the Google AI payment plan. Plus ($7.99 per month) includes 200 credits per month, Pro ($19.99) includes 1,000, and the two Ultra tiers carry 10,000 and 25,000.

There is a free back door, though: Google made Omni available there is no cost within YouTube Shorts and the YouTube Create app for users 18 and older. And for example, an API developer who buys Omni costs about $0.10 per second of video—about a dollar apiece.

Every Omni video features Google’s SynthID watermarks which are recognized as artificially generated by AI. It’s not shown on screen, but platforms can detect it, so don’t plan your business by assuming that the recorded data is real.

Here is the Ledger promotional video we have. Remember, video production has a lot of random parts because the technology is necessary for these types of work to work. If you don’t like the first generation, try it a few times.

If you see some mistakes that can be fixed in post, then there is no need to spend extra money. There are free tools that can help you trim video segments, adjust lighting, color, and more.

For example, in this Tiktok ad, the woman repeats the call to action. We need to change it, and you will find out how in the next step

Step 5: Drill into CapCut

Export the clip and open it in CapCut. This is where you minimize errors – the video AI still produces extra sound at times or surrounds – and trim the clip to exactly what you want before sending it to your social media accounts.

Subtitles are one of the things you should consider. The video, audio and voice commands that dominate TikTok are behind CapCut Pro, which costs about $7.99 per month or $59.99 per year, and the free tier only records text. Handwriting is free, so if you’re patient, you can write your own.

Tiktok’s ad looked like this after our call to action:

Going down the rabbit hole

This flow results in formal, non-organizational results. Once it’s clicked, you’ll need some controls: ElevenLabs for consistent voice over multi-screen animations, Kling for static AI avatars and motion control tools, node-based workflows like ComfyUI for granular interface control, n8n about automation, etc.

Each one adds cost and complexity, but the basic pipelines above are sufficient to test whether a product is selling before implementing anything complicated.

Selling on the TikTok Shop doesn’t require too much on your part – just be 18 years or older with a government ID and bank details that match your registration, and approval is usually on the way. three days. TikTok charges a 6% shipping fee for bulk orders. Affiliate marketing requires 1,000 followers to sign up, and full acquisition takes 5,000 followers plus 30 days in the program.

YouTube also lowered the barrier: In March, its Shopping Affiliate program was opened only to those who create the Partner Program. 500 subscribers in 12 countries, including the US and Brazil.

Both TikTok and YouTube allow AI-generated advertising videos, but creators and advertisers must disclose the nature of the content and any commercial relationships behind it. On the floor TikTok’s artificial intelligence systemreal images, audio or video generated by AI must be recorded; advertisers with non-Spark ads must also enable the “These ads contain AI-generated” option in TikTok Ads Managerwhere anyone who promotes a brand, product or service must turn on TikTok’s advertising disclosure implementation.

YouTube also requires creators to select “Yes” under “use of AI” when the video contains real-life content created or improved by AI, after which YouTube will place an AI label; Videos that have money, are authorized or have a commercial impact must use a separate paid advertising platform to reveal.

X is A true policy prohibits artificial or modified media when it is displayed fraudulently and is likely to cause confusion, threaten public safety or cause serious harm, marketing rules they want ads to be authentic, legitimate and relevant to what they’re promoting. It does not specifically prohibit the use of AI-generated images, videos, and text in advertising.

But let’s put your feet on the ground with an interesting number before you quit: Per Camille Moore, president of the advertising agency. Third Eye SightOf the 803,500 TikTok Shops operating in the US last year, more than half had zero sales. The tools are almost free. The competition is not.