"Over 50% of advertisers are already using AIGC to generate creative content, with AI marketing content exceeding 10%."

These figures stem from the "2025 China Advertiser Marketing Trend Survey Report" released by CTR in April this year.

What does 50% signify? In 2024, China's advertising industry's total output value surpassed 1.5 trillion yuan, according to the State Administration for Market Regulation. The fact that over half of advertisers are willing to embrace AI tools speaks volumes about its economic and market potential.

But can AI truly aid advertisers in reducing costs and enhancing efficiency? After communicating with a group of overseas advertisers, Xiaguangshe discovered that the significance of AI tools and AI videos to advertisers likely extends far beyond mere cost reduction and efficiency improvement.

It's not just advertisers; e-commerce professionals, short drama post-production teams, game developers, and numerous other video-related industries are all experiencing structural impacts from AI video.

Once known primarily for entertainment purposes, AI video tools have suddenly gained traction in productivity. How are these diverse industries utilizing AI video tools? As AI video gains momentum globally, what role will Chinese companies play?

Currently, overseas enterprises face a new growth bottleneck: as the primary consumer group shifts to younger individuals, finding new ways to capture this demographic has become crucial for growth. Additionally, rising costs such as traffic and labor force enterprises to seek novel growth strategies.

This is evident in advertising and marketing. Some 4A companies mentioned to Xiaguangshe, "Even with lower quotes and shorter execution cycles, why did the brand choose my competitor?" The likely reason is that the brand perceived a lack of creativity, unable to bring new growth to the business.

The logic is straightforward: brands go overseas to seek new growth, and advertising spending aims to attract new traffic. If the sole goal were cost-saving, they could simply rerun old ads without additional expenditure.

So why are over 50% of advertisers willing to invest in AI? Currently, AI tools and AI videos are synonymous with novelty and eye-catching appeal. They can trigger viral C-end transmission through unique creativity, fostering new user growth.

To illustrate, consider this example:

Recently, the US iOS App Store witnessed a new change. PixVerse, one of the largest domestic AI video generation platforms with the broadest global user base, updated to version 4.5 and surged to the fourth spot on the US iOS App Store overall chart and first in the video app category, outpacing giants like Instagram, YouTube, and Snapchat. To date, PixVerse has amassed over 60 million users, solidifying its position as one of the largest domestic AI video generation platforms globally.

Why did PixVerse explode in popularity worldwide? It's novel and user-friendly. Upload a Minion photo to PixVerse, input the prompt "Minions, exploring the castle," and in just 5 seconds, you can generate a fun 1080p video of "Minions riding a little car and eating cotton candy while exploring the castle."

Novel creative AI videos align perfectly with the dissemination logic of the short video era, prompting spontaneous user sharing. And "spontaneous sharing" translates to new business growth opportunities for C-end enterprises. Imagine, in overseas marketing, when a classic image suddenly presents a new storyline through AI creativity, sparking viral transmission—will it still be difficult for the enterprise or product to gain fame?

In addition to fostering new growth, Jason, an overseas advertiser, noted, "The significance of AI tools for brands going overseas also lies in cost reduction and improved input-output ratio."

In recent years, almost all overseas advertisers have complained about "increasingly competitive advertising." On one hand, the production cost of advertising materials is rising; on the other, accurately gauging user and platform preferences is challenging, often leading to ineffective investments despite spending.

On short video platforms like TikTok, trends typically have a short lifecycle, with popularity waning within days or even hours. Hence, upon discovering a trend, advertisers must respond swiftly, leveraging its heat to concentrate on disseminating brand concepts and promoting products.

However, human resources are limited. By the time 4A companies' designers, copywriters, directors, editors, and operators work overtime to produce video ads, the heat of many marketing points has already faded. To achieve the desired dissemination effect, brands must increase traffic investment, resulting in a naturally low input-output ratio.

But with the addition of AI video tools like PixVerse, this contradiction is expected to be fundamentally altered.

Simply put, with PixVerse, brands can produce hundreds of video materials at a low cost in just 5 seconds. If the effect is unsatisfactory, they can generate another 100 video materials. Catching a trend is a big win; missing it incurs no loss as the generation cost of AI tools is negligible compared to human overtime.

Aishi Technology also mentioned that renowned enterprise users such as Baidu Intelligent Cloud, iFLYTEK, BlueFocus, and Monica, after utilizing Aishi Technology's API product's (http://platform.aishiai.com/) video templates, not only produced engaging content more quickly but also aligned with user preferences in the short video era, garnering substantial spontaneous traffic and significantly enhancing content delivery's fission and growth effect.

Furthermore, AI tools can be both "cost-saving tools" and "creative tools." From previous templates like "Venom" and "Ghibli-style" to the recent "AI Baby Podcast" template that swept TikTok, these are nationwide hotspots created by AI tools. In the current context of soaring traffic costs, the difference between following trends and creating them means the difference between profitability and loss.

It's conceivable that when AI tools can genuinely meet enterprise needs, swiftly produce video marketing materials, private domain operation materials, product display ads, and other content, significantly reducing user acquisition and operating costs, it's only a matter of time before the remaining 50% of advertisers embrace AI.

As "embracing AI" gradually becomes a new trend across industries, there's still no consensus on AI video application implementation. Different enterprises' needs for AI video applications vary vastly.

Some e-commerce enterprises told Xiaguangshe, "Content e-commerce has emerged as a new global trend in e-commerce development, with almost all merchants attempting to transform into content e-commerce. AI video tools are expected to play a pivotal role in the initial stage of this transformation."

Consider the rapidly growing YouTube channel @ViralBabySongs as a reference. This channel's content is straightforward: AI videos of cute kids lip-syncing songs, performing nursery rhymes, and giggling. Most of the cute kid images and dubbing are created using AI tools, yet the growth effect is astonishing.

This account was registered on March 5, 2025, and in just over two months, it posted 423 videos, amassing 190 million views and 144,000 subscribers! Given that the account's content focuses on cute kids singing, the target audience is clearly parents or users who enjoy cute kid content. The value of this parent-child audience is well-known to e-commerce enterprises.

Why can such simple AI content quickly build a following? The core lies in emotional resonance and novelty. The cute image and sweet voice of the baby evoke emotional resonance among viewers. The AI tags and gameplay provide content creativity, stimulating users' sharing enthusiasm.

The US stock market listing information platform Outbrain noted, "The success of short video marketing mainly hinges on driving emotions! Simultaneously, two-thirds of media placement effects are directly driven by creativity levels."

As content marketing becomes increasingly challenging for new ideas, and it becomes harder for mid-level merchants to build a following, AI video tools offer a brand new creative approach. Whether animating old photos with AI or playing the "look in my eyes!" AI face swap, the novelty of AI videos increases the likelihood of merchants building a following.

From a broader application perspective, AI will significantly lower the threshold for e-commerce enterprises to transform into content e-commerce, facilitating their transformation. In the past, professional video shooting techniques and anchor training were significant hurdles for shelf e-commerce enterprises transitioning to content e-commerce. With AI video support, AI can generate various live broadcast videos, infinitely adjust broadcast content, and even customize anchor faces according to the target market, eliminating the need for trial-and-error costs.

Beyond content marketing, AI video tools, as novel content creation tools, are also directly impacting the content industry's production logic.

The most obvious example is short dramas. If the 1.0 era of short dramas was about brainstorming and twists, the 2.0 era sees top short dramas competing on visuals, production, and novelty. A batch of AI short dramas has also started to emerge.

Chen Kun, the director of the AI short drama "Miraculous Journey of the Mountains and Seas," which has over 53 million views across platforms, revealed that AI technology reduced the short drama's production cost by at least a quarter. Gao Pengfei, the director of "I Deliver Food in Another World," stated that AI handled 70% to 80% of the workload, reducing the drama's cost, originally requiring an investment of one to two million yuan, by nearly 90%.

Why can AI video tools help save money on short dramas?

Firstly, in the image generation stage, AI's "first and last frame" function only requires the user to upload a starting image and an ending image, with a prompt input describing the desired transition—it can then generate a lively video from two static images, saving substantial time and money required for shooting.

When entering the video editing stage, AI can also replace different characters' images. In the past, replacing characters in videos was time-consuming and labor-intensive, requiring operations like image matting, editing, and re-exporting. But with AI tools, a short drama character's image can be replaced in seconds. After detailed processing of physical laws and character emotional expression, the character images in PixVerse videos maintain stable facial expressions and smooth emotional transitions.

It can be said that AI technology is providing new options for the film and television industry from multiple dimensions, including production costs and content forms.

Although AI applications have only just begun to demonstrate their productivity value, it doesn't deter various industries from placing high hopes on its future development.

In a research report issued by JPMorgan Chase in March this year, it was stated that the development of generative AI can be roughly divided into four stages, and China is at the beginning of the second stage—enterprises are beginning to integrate generative AI into their existing businesses, but specific value creation models are still being explored.

In other words, the landscape of AI applications in China is "unsettled, with many contenders vying for supremacy."

The moves of large companies certainly warrant attention. Kuaishou's Keling, Douyin's Jimeng, and Alibaba Cloud's Tongyi Wanxiang are all heavily invested, demonstrating large companies' determination to seize the AI video niche—at least verbally, they all claim to be All in AI.

However, bottom-up innovation in the AI video ecosystem is unlikely to come from large companies. Historical experience shows that large companies often have more "jars and pots" they are reluctant to break and lack the resolve for "disruptive innovation."

Google and OpenAI in the AI era are excellent examples. Although Google has always claimed to use AI to reshape search, recently, Apple's senior vice president, Eddie Cue, revealed, "Over the past two months, the number of Google searches conducted using the Safari browser has gradually decreased. The main reason for the decline in search volume is the rise of generative AI applications like ChatGPT and Perplexity."

This heavy news directly caused a 7% plunge in the share price of Google's parent company, Alphabet, with a market value evaporation of approximately $250 billion.

This inevitably recalls the terrifying prophecy made by Gmail founder Paul Buchheit when ChatGPT emerged in February 2023: "AI chatbots like ChatGPT will destroy Google just as search engines killed the Yellow Pages... Even if it's not ChatGPT itself that breaks Google's monopoly, technological progress will inevitably change the way people access information."

In the field of AI-generated video, startups also play the role of industry disruptors.

Amidst giants, how did Aishi Technology manage to rise to prominence, accumulating 60 million users and soaring to the top of the US iOS video app rankings? The answer lies in startups' unencumbered nature, allowing them to drive technological change with reckless abandon—a hallmark of disruptors.

When groundbreaking innovations in foundational technologies emerge, they catalyze seismic shifts across myriad industries, many of which may initially seem unrelated.

Why did Feng Ji, the founder of Game Science, proclaim "Deepseek" as a national-level scientific and technological achievement? What is the link between AI and game development?

Indeed, there is a connection. Consider "Black Myth: Wukong." Beyond combat, a 3A game masterpiece demands seamless transitions that propel the narrative forward and voiceovers that amplify emotional depth. Feng Ji revealed in an interview, "The team dedicated six years to crafting 'Black Myth: Wukong,' investing considerable effort in refining these intricate details."

Picture the transformation PixVerse could usher into gaming—upload two sketches, outline the transition, and witness a fluid video emerge. Isn't this akin to a game demo? Even if the final product falls short, it saves countless hours spent discarding drafts. Alternatively, utilize the "video redraw" feature to visualize how a dark transition animation transforms under a brighter hue.

We have compelling reasons to believe that, fueled by AI tools, the next Black Myth: Wukong might not require "six years to craft a masterpiece." As the accessibility of AI video technology broadens and its application boundaries expand, more industries will ultimately thrive from the advancements in video generation.