Eric Seufert's podcast with researchers who explored the impact of visual Generative AI (genAI) on advertising effectiveness reveals significant findings. They posed four key questions about how genAI modifies existing ads and creates new ones, and whether disclosing AI involvement impacts consumer response. Their experiments involved a "Man vs. Machine" competition, where they tested AI-modified and AI-created ads against human-designed ones, using a mix of lab tests and a real-world Google Ads campaign with over 100,000 views. The results showed a striking difference in performance between the two AI approaches. GenAI-created ads, developed from scratch, resulted in a 19% increase in click-through rates (CTR) compared to human ads. In contrast, genAI-modified ads offered no improvement. The study highlighted that the more creative freedom given to the AI, such as designing the product packaging alongside the ad, led to additional CTR boosts of about 15%. This aligns with Rich Sutton's "bitter lesson" in AI, which emphasizes that systems relying on extensive data and computation often outperform those constrained by human-designed parameters. When the AI was forced to adhere to human layouts, its performance suffered. Interestingly, when ads were labeled as "AI-generated," the CTR dropped by 31.5%. This suggests that consumer perception of AI involvement may negatively impact engagement, though it seems irrelevant whether the ads were created using traditional tools or AI. The findings reflect a broader trend toward automation in advertising, echoing sentiments from industry leaders like Mark Zuckerberg about the potential for AI to streamline ad creation and targeting.