The cost of producing a commercial is dropping to zero. Jethro Rothe-Kushel, founder of Ritual Ads, has produced spots for Apple, Adidas and American Express the old way — six months to a year, seven-figure budgets, and a 40 percent success rate at the end of it — and now builds them for Reebok, Shopify and Martha Stewart with a human-directed AI pipeline. Jonathan Green talks with him about why the skill is moving from creation to curation, how a Reebok campaign that was about to be cancelled got a pre-visualization in ninety minutes and sold out the shoes within hours, why the real KPI is how fast you can get someone off the platform, and where this ends up: an audience of one.

Key Takeaways:

The old model was slow, expensive and mostly failed anyway. Six months to a year, million-dollar-plus budgets, and roughly 40 percent of ads worked. That is the bar AI production is being measured against, not perfection.
The skill is shifting from creation to curation. When commercials can be generated faster than you can watch them, the valuable human is the one who decides which idea is worth building, then builds it with real artists or real people.
The Reebok proof: a launch for WNBA player Angel Reese was about to be pulled after six months and over a million dollars sunk. A ninety-minute pre-visualization saved it. They shot her against a white cyc, generated everything else, and the shoes sold out within hours.
Brand and performance are no longer a choice. Generate data on what your customers are actually talking about, find the conversations nobody is answering, answer them with content, and measure the spend across 500-plus apps and channels.
Human attention is too valuable to farm. Social platforms optimised for time on site; the real metric for advancing anyone is how quickly the content does its job and lets them leave.

Notable Quotes:

"We believe at Ritual Ads that the cost of production is dropping to zero." — Jethro Rothe-Kushel

"The real key metric in terms of advancing humanity is how long can we keep them off the platform." — Jethro Rothe-Kushel

Connect with Jethro Rothe-Kushel:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jethrofilms
Company: Ritual Ads — https://ritualads.com

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