How to create product ads with AI for TikTok and YouTube, for (almost) free.

TikTok Shop, the e-commerce platform that allows users to buy and sell things directly on TikTok, has been moved $64.3 billion in merchandise in 2025, nearly doubling from the previous year. The United States alone accounted for $15.1 billion of that amount, and most of that was driven by short, cheap, face-to-camera videos of someone holding a product and telling you why you need it.

These videos required a person, a phone, proper lighting, and lots of takes.

However, all you need these days is a product image and three AI tools, most of which are available for free. Here’s the entire workflow, step-by-step, with no technical background required, so you can start your own marketing empire.

Step 1: Get a clear picture of the product

Before anything else, you should know what you want to sell. For this, you have a few options: either choose something you’re passionate about, or simply go ahead and find the most popular items in the TikTok store and download what you think they’ll click on.

Upload a photo of the product you want to sell — a piece of clothing, accessory, gadget, or something else. If you sell a specific product or are affiliated with a company, use photos of your suppliers. Then crop the image so that only the product is visible, without a model, background clutter, or watermarks.

In our examples, we chose this Green Top for TikTok (vertical format) and this Ledger crypto wallet for YouTube (horizontal format).

This crop is more important than it may seem. The AI ​​will treat this image as the source of truth for the product, so the cleaner the reference, the more accurate the result will be.

Step 2: Place a form in your product

This step is important if you are promoting clothing and accessories because it involves a more human approach.

Open ChatGPT and upload the cropped image. want GPT 2 image For this step – in DecryptionIn Google’s own live test, it outperformed Google’s Nano Banana 2 in terms of image realism and product accuracy, which is exactly what an AI-generated ad needs to not look fake.

Then imagine the scene you want for the ad, and turn it into a quick prompt.

You can use something like this: “Create a 16:9 portrait of a Latina woman in her late 20s wearing exactly this garment, taking a normal smartphone photo in a bright apartment. Keep all product features exactly as shown in the reference image: shape, proportions, color, fabric texture, stitching, and fit. Do not redesign, recolor, or alter the product in any way.”

We got something like this:

Tweak the demographic details — race, age, body type — to match who your target audience actually is. Change the setting in the same way: a gym for sportswear, a café for accessories, and a street corner for streetwear. For products other than clothing, replace “wear” with “hold” or “use.”

Do you want the form in a specific place? Upload a second image to the site and have ChatGPT place the subject of the first image inside the second image. This is our topic on a space station, just because.

This trick also works with Google Nano banana 2which handles installation well. countryside It is a much cheaper alternative, but it tends to drop fast detail, so the accuracy of the product may be affected.

Step 3: Ask ChatGPT for the script — in JSON format

Now you need a script for a 10-second video. Don’t write it yourself; Let ChatGPT do the marketing thinking. Something like this might work, but be as specific as possible in what you’re asking for:

“Work as a senior direct response marketer. Write a 10-second script in English for a UGC-style video where the woman in the attached image is talking to the camera and selling the attached product. The copy should sound natural and spoken, engage the viewer in the first 2 seconds, say the price is $20, and close with a call to action “Click the cart below.” Output the script in JSON format for Google Flow, with a timeline describing what’s happening on screen, camera behavior, and dialogue “Exactly every tenth of a second.”

JSON format is no frills. Video templates, especially from Google, follow much more precisely structured timelines than messy paragraphs, so you get the dialogue, gestures, and rhythms you asked for. One caveat: review the output, because it can be so literal that if the timeline ends at the eighth second, the model may repeat an action to fill the remaining two seconds.

If you want, you can customize the version for each platform. In the prompt, ask the AI ​​to say things like “Best thing I’ve seen on my TikTok feed.” If you want to switch social media, “tiktok feed” becomes “on X”, “in my Reels”, or “on Shorts” depending on where you turn it on. The call to action changes too: shopping cart works for TikTok, “link in bio” works for Instagram, and “verify pinned comment” works for YouTube.

Step 4: Create the video in Google Flow

Go to Google Flow and select Gemini Omnithe model that Google launched at I/O 2026 in May. It creates clips of up to 10 seconds with native audio — meaning your model is actually speaking the dialogue — and accepts reference images, which is the whole point here.

Google Veo works, arguably better, but Omni is cheaper… and we like cheap products.

Upload both files as references: the created image of your model and the close-up image of the cropped product. Paste the JSON into the prompt box. Choose 16:9 portrait for TikTok, Reels, and Shorts, or 16:9 landscape for standard YouTube videos and pre-roll ads.

Now, the money part. Flow gives non-subscribers 50 free credits daily, but Google Support documents Restrict those to Veo 3.1 models.

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

There is a truly free backdoor, although Google has made Omni available on At no cost Inside YouTube Shorts and the YouTube Create app for users 18 or older. For reference, the developer API prices Omni at around $0.10 per second of video, which is about a dollar per clip.

Every Omni video carries an invisible Google SynthID watermark that identifies it as created by artificial intelligence. It won’t show up on screen, but platforms can detect it, so don’t plan a business around pretending the footage is real.

Here’s the Ledger announcement video we got. Remember that video creation has a lot of random components because creativity is key to making these models. If you don’t like the first generation, try a few more times.

If you notice some irregularities that can be fixed by mail, there is no need to spend additional credits. There are free tools that allow you to crop parts of the video, change lighting, color, etc.

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

Step 5: Polish it in CapCut

Export the clip and open it in CapCut. This is where you clip out anomalies — the video AI still produces the occasional extra phrase or repeated gesture — and trim the clip to exactly what you want before exporting it directly to your social accounts.

Translations are the only feature worth paying attention to. The word-by-word animated caption styles that dominate TikTok fall behind CapCut Pro, which is priced at about $7.99 per month or $59.99 per year, and the free tier sets automatic captions. Manual script remains free, so if you’re patient, you can write your own.

The Tiktok ad ended up looking like this after we fixed the call to action:

Going down the rabbit hole

This workflow produces acceptable results, not agency-level results. Once you tap it, you’ll need more control: ElevenLabs for a consistent brand voice across dozens of videos, Kling for continuous AI avatars and motion controls, and contract-based workflows like ComfyUI for fine-grained scene control. n8n For automation, etc.

Each adds cost and complexity, but the basic path above is enough to test if the product sells before spending anything serious.

Selling on TikTok Shop doesn’t require much on your part, just that you be 18 or over and have a government ID and bank details that match your registration, and approval usually arrives within Three days. TikTok takes a 6% referral fee on most orders. Promoting others’ products as an affiliate requires 1,000 followers to apply, and full access requires 5,000 followers plus 30 days in the program.

YouTube has dropped the bar even lower: In March, it opened its affiliate shopping program to affiliate program creators vs 500 subscribers In 12 countries, including the United States and Brazil.

TikTok and YouTube both allow AI-generated promotional videos, but creators and advertisers must disclose how the content was created and any commercial relationship behind it. under TikTok AI-Generated Content PolicyRealistic images, audio or video generated by AI must be labeled; Advertisers running non-Spark ads must also activate the “This ad contains AI-generated content” option in TikTok Ads Managerwhile anyone promoting a brand, product or service must run a TikTok commercial content disclosure session.

YouTube similarly asks creators to select “Yes” under “Use of AI” when a video contains real-world content that was meaningfully created or edited using AI, after which YouTube applies the AI ​​label; Sponsored, sponsored or commercially influenced videos must separately use paid platform promotion Reveal.

X Authenticity policy Synthetic or manipulated media are prohibited when they are presented deceptively and could cause widespread confusion, threaten public safety, or cause serious harm, while Advertising rules It requires that advertisements be honest, legal, and consistent with the product being promoted. The use of AI-generated images, videos and audio in promotional content is not expressly prohibited.

But let’s get your feet on the ground with an alarming number before you quit your job: Per Camille Moore, head of a marketing agency Third eye visionsOf the 803,500 TikTok Shops operating in the US last year, more than half recorded zero sales. The tools are almost free. Competition is not like that.