What Oreo’s AI Ad Might Reveal About a Better Workflow

Most AI video ads in your feed look cheap: warped logos, morphing hands, floaty camera moves. The models aren’t the problem; the workflow is.

Take the case of Mondelez, the manufacturer of Oreos, for example. It has already invested upwards of $40 million in a generative video platform, built with Accenture and Publicis, so it can work out dozens of versions to have a human pick out the most Oreo-like one, reducing costs by up to half as it moves toward AI-assisted TV ads in 2026.

Mondelez isn't paying $40 million for prompts. It's paying for control and curation. With off-the-shelf tools, you can do the same thing: borrow the same logic; that is, use AI for volume, use editing for deleting the cheap looking shots, and only deliver what appears as if it were directed by a human.

Step 1: Write the model script, not just the client one

Create a short beat sheet and label each beat as REAL (pack shot, logo, tagline, live footage) or AI (where the camera can move, background can change). Example:

REAL – package placed on desk with morsel removed by hand

AI – camera orbits package with falling crumbs

It's up to you to define what's sacred, and what areas need improvement.

Step 2: Treat Image-to-Video as the bare minimum professional standard

Text-to-video is a kind of hallucination machine. When the word "cookie" shows up in a prompt, you'll get a different cookie each time.

Your professional baseline should be image-to-video.

Begin with a single clean, high-resolution shot of the product. With Runway, you can choose ‘image-to-video,’ click on ‘image,’ and ‘upload an image,’ giving it camera commands such as ‘slow push-in on the pack on a table’ and ‘orbit around the cookie on a plate.’ Again, working with the same source image, generate a series of raw shots incorporating the real pack.

Step 3: Choose the story, not the prettiest frame

Now, look at your videos one after the other. Ignore the artificial intelligence factor and pick the one where the advantage is obvious in the first three seconds, the product appears clearly on a mobile phone screen, and the atmosphere suits your brand identity. That will be your hero clip. Take shots from other videos if they help, but work on one story line.

Step 4: Correct the floaty effect with real editing tricks

Raw video from AI will almost always be drifting.

Use a 1.5x or 2x speed ramp for the AI-cut videos in CapCut/Premiere, cut on motion frames rather than static ones, and include some static frames for resting the eye. Add your text, brand colors, and logos. Crucially, layer in real sound design and human voiceover.

Step 5: Prototype on social before you pay for reach

Consider your "final cut" a prototype.

Publish two or three versions of these Reels/TikTok's/Shorts with small, fixed budgets. Observe the CTR and some level of engagement and let the numbers decide which one is worth investing in TV ad space as well. That is what Mondelez is doing with the same logic, AI has made it so affordable; viewers will pick what needs scaling.

IAB reports that about half of advertisers already use GenAI for video ads, and nearly one-third of digital video ads are AI-built or AI-enhanced in 2025, jumping to ~39% in 2026.

Cautionary Case: Coca-Cola and the Raw-AI Problem

Recently Coco-Cola came up with the AI Coca-Cola Holiday project, which is what you get when you don't finish the polish, it looks expensive-looking but feels unrefined, with creepy faces, objects changing from shot to shot, and a weird 'something's amiss' vibe.

The problem wasn’t having AI in the pipe. It's having too much raw footage to make it out the other end. Send out footage with those errors, strange hands, floating objects, lack of continuity and your viewers will see those same things.

Before You Ship: Three Harsh Last Tests

The Logo Freeze – Scrub through the timeline and freeze on random frames. If the pack or logo ever appears off, fix it at the source and rerun the shot.

The Mute-Scroll Test – Watch the video muted and try to distill the sensation of the first-second view in one word. If you can’t, your pace and shot choices lack clarity.

The Brand-Without-The-Logo Test – Watch muted with your eyes half-open. When you think about your brand, would a fan be able to know it’s you without your logo being read?

The Bottom Line

Mondelez is dropping $40M on helping the industry mature the use of AI from a toy tool into a disciplined pass-through for testing and scaling.

AI is just your tool budget away from your industry's solution for doing three times the work with three times the intelligence. Apply your workflow muscle for volume, edit out the cheap tells, and shell out only after your messaging is the best a three-person team would be proud to own.