During the NBA Finals, Kalshi ran an ad made with Google’s Veo 3. The online betting platform displayed an entirely AI-generated ad during one of the biggest sports events of the year, costing just around $2,000 to create.

The 30-second spot stitched together a range of oddball scenes: a cowboy-hat-wearing senior carrying a chihuahua, a man swimming in eggs, and an alien chugging beer. Each of these clips was designed to highlight offbeat betting topics Kalshi users can wager on, including whether the Oklahoma City Thunder or Indiana Pacers would win the NBA Finals, how many hurricanes will hit this year, and whether egg prices will rise in the next month.

How the ad was made using AI

According to PJ Accetturo, the creator of the ad, the campaign was created using Veo 3, a text-to-video tool and Gemini to generate hundreds of scenes. On X, Accetturo said Kalshi hired him “to make the most unhinged NBA Finals commercial possible.” He added that he was contacted to "create a spot about people betting on various markets, including the NBA Finals." "I said the best Veo 3 content is crazy people doing crazy things while showcasing your brand," he wrote.

To guide the visuals, he used Gemini to write a script and generate prompts. To prevent the quality from dropping, he said he asked Gemini to return only five prompts at a time. "I always tell it to return 5 prompts at a time. Any more than that and the quality starts to slip," he wrote.

Accetturo generated 300 to 400 video clips using Veo 3 and selected just 15 for the final edit. He completed the project alone within two to three days, using CapCut and Adobe Premiere Pro to edit the footage. He stated that the process resulted in a 95% cost reduction compared to traditional ad production.

On YouTube, Accetturo said, “Kalshi hired me to make the most unhinged NBA Finals commercial possible. Network TV actually approved this GTA-style madness to be shown during the game.” He claimed the ad generated 30M+ views in 3 weeks.

A new kind of ad production, and a new kind of ad

Kalshi’s national TV ad cost around $2,000 to make. This is a strikingly low figure when compared to the six- or seven-figure budgets that often accompany sports broadcast spots. Traditional TV commercials typically cost hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars to create.

The use of Veo 3 for TV ads shows how fast AI video tools are entering mainstream advertising. Advertisers may now face a new reality where cheaper, AI-generated content can buy national airtime. What previously required a team and large budgets may now be achieved with the right AI tools.

Generative video AI tools are now fully part of the advertising toolkit. Major companies like Google, Amazon, Meta, and Netflix are already working on or offering generative AI tools to support advertisers. Meta, for instance, plans for full ad automation next year. Accetturo suggested that "high-dopamine Veo 3 videos will be the ad trend of 2025."

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Nelson Oboh
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