Sky Media has launched an AI-powered creative advertising toolkit designed to help small and medium-sized businesses get onto TV by cutting the time, cost and complexity of producing TV-ready ads.
At the heart of the offer is Waymark, an AI creative studio that can generate 10, 15 or 30-second ads in seconds using content pulled from a brand’s own website. Sky says the system produces scripts and creatives that can be tailored by audience or location, with compliance support built in.
The toolkit is designed to connect ad creation directly to Sky Media’s addressable distribution and measurement capabilities, extending the company’s long-running AdSmart proposition for household-level targeting. Sky Media says it will combine Waymark’s instant creative with creative intelligence, smart targeting and a prediction engine to help advertisers test, refine and launch campaigns with greater confidence.
Clearcast’s BCAP approval process is incorporated into the workflow, with Sky positioning this as a route to formal sign-off for TV advertising standards. Waymark, backed by Comcast NBCUniversal’s LIFT Labs, has already supported more than 30,000 businesses in the US and helped generate more than $400m in ad revenue, according to Sky.
Sky Media’s “Creative Intelligence” element is delivered through a partnership with DAIVID, an AI platform that predicts emotional response to a given creative execution. Sky says it has mapped the emotional profile of more than 1,500 creatives, creating benchmarks against category and global norms, enabling smaller advertisers to adopt a test-and-learn approach to improve effectiveness before campaigns go live.
Once created, ads can be distributed across Sky’s addressable inventory on both live TV and video on demand. Targeting options highlighted include geo-targeting down to postcode and local authority, drive-time targeting for sectors such as retail and hospitality, and deterministic targeting based on verified data rather than modelled estimates.
Next month, Sky plans to add an “Outcome Prediction Engine” using its effectiveness databank, Norman, which draws on results from thousands of campaigns. Sky says this will help businesses predict outcomes based on variables such as advertiser category, brand size and budget, and will be combined with DAIVID’s creative analytics to de-risk TV investment for first-time advertisers.
Steven McHenry, Investment Director of Sky Media, said: “TV has always set the standard for attention and trust, but the creative process can feel like a barrier for many smaller businesses. Our new AI-powered toolkit removes that barrier. It allows brands who are new to TV to create cost-effective ads, test and refine them, and launch campaigns with real confidence in their impact.”
Ian Forrester, CEO and founder of DAIVID, said: “Sky Media’s new AI creative toolkit is a major step forward in opening up TV advertising to ambitious SMEs ready to harness the power of AI. Waymark’s instant creative, combined with Sky’s addressability, gives brands a powerful way in – and with DAIVID’s predictive emotional intelligence built into the process, those advertisers can be confident their ads will have an impact from day one. We’re proud to partner with Sky and help bring robust, enterprise-level creative effectiveness to businesses who are ready to scale.”
Thomas Bremond, Managing Director, International, Comcast Advertising, added: “Our ongoing partnership with Waymark in the US is giving advertisers a faster, more affordable way to create TV ready ads and distribute them across news, entertainment, live sports, and other premium video environments. In the short time since this capability was introduced to Comcast Advertising clients, thousands of new video creatives have already been produced – many by advertisers new to multiscreen TV.”
