Show HN: Built an AI ad generator and ran $9K of FB ads with it (opens in new tab)

Been in the AI image gen space since 2023, before even GPT image gen was a thing, and after spending ~9K on Facebook ads for my own projects (made a video about that actually) I realized the thing I kept getting stuck on was the creatives themselves. I'm horrible at making reels-type video ads and Canva even with templates is surprisingly complicated for ad-specific stuff, plus everything ends up looking the same as everyone else using the same templates.

Made a video going into detail about the full FB ads journey if anyone's interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoe_l67ZReU

Most of the existing AI ad tools (Predis, AdCreative, etc.) give you these generic template outputs that look like stock photo collages, or they're enterprise-priced and overkill if you're just a solo founder trying to test 10-20 ad variations quickly. I wanted something where I could throw in product images, describe what I wanted, and get back actual usable creatives, static ads, before/after formats, UGC-style videos, the stuff that actually converts on FB.

Some things I learned building this: the competitor research part ended up being way more useful than I expected. Being able to see what ads competitors are running, how long they've been live (which usually means they're working) and then generating variations off that is a much better workflow than starting from scratch and hoping the AI makes something good. Same lesson as with Framecall, if you just say "make me a nice ad" the output is a gamble. The more specific you are about the hook, the pain point, the format, the better the result. I don't think people talk about this enough with AI creative tools.

UGC video ads are where most of the value is but also hardest to get right. Still iterating on that part.