spent way too much testing AI ad tools for my small ecom store this year - honest rundown

context so this is useful: i run a small skincare brand, do my own meta ads, and im not a designer. freelance creatives got expensive fast so i spent a chunk of budget testing tools instead. heres what held up and what i dropped.

canva ai - fine for resizes and quick edits, but the from-scratch ai creatives still look template-y. good for manual touchups, not for "make me an ad."

adcreative ai - pumps out static variations fast, handy when you need volume for testing. downside is everything starts looking samey and it got pricey for what i got out of it.

chatgpt / gemini image gen - decent for backgrounds and concepts, but theres no ad structure, no sizing, no sense of what an ad actually needs. you end up assembling the whole thing yourself.

creatify - where i landed for the video/ugc side. point it at a product url or image and it builds a short video ad, then you just swap the hook. for skincare the demo/ugc style beat every static i ran, wasnt even close.

honestly the thing that moved the needle wasnt the tool, it was treating it like an ad creator that starts from a proven format instead of a blank timeline. i keep a few go-to templates split by ecom vs social and pick whatever hook fits the product, way less guess and check.

takeaway: static plateaued for me pretty fast. once i shifted budget into video my cpa actually dropped. if youre physical products and not a designer, dont sleep on the video side.

curious what everyone else is running, especially anyone whos cracked static.