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The Journal.

AI Has Come for Advertising

The Journal.

The Wall Street Journal

Daily News, Business News, News

4.25.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2025

⏱️ 19 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

While some viewers complain that AI-generated ads look uncanny, brands like Coca-Cola are making them anyway. WSJ’s Katie Deighton explains how Coke remade their iconic “Holidays Are Coming” ad with artificial intelligence, and what that signals for the ad industry’s future. Jessica Mendoza hosts. Further Listening: - The Era of AI Layoffs Has Begun - How a $1.5 Billion Settlement Could Alter the Course of AISign up for WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

When you think about the American advertising business, if you're like me, you think of the TV show Mad Men.

0:13.2

Every great ad tells a story.

0:16.7

Here to tell that story is Peggy Olson.

0:19.4

The show's set in the 1960s and follows an ad exec named Don Draper.

0:24.9

In nearly every episode, he and his team brainstorm creative new ads that play on people's

0:30.1

imagination and emotions.

0:32.3

My colleague Katie Dayton, who covers advertising, says Mad Men is pretty realistic.

0:38.8

The way an ad has been made for the last 50, 60 years, you know, all the way back to

0:45.2

the Mad Men era, the way it's made hasn't really changed that much.

0:52.8

That series famously ends on a Coke ad.

0:57.1

Can you sing me the song?

1:01.6

I will not sing it.

1:03.2

Just a little, just a little.

1:04.4

But I can tell you, I would like to buy the world a Coke.

1:10.4

Men. World of Coke. I'd like to buy the world of Coke.

1:14.6

Mad Men was fiction, but that Coke ad is real.

1:18.9

Coke for years has been making influential award-winning ads.

1:22.8

They're known as leaders in the field, and decades of creative, unique ads have helped

1:27.2

make them one of the most recognizable brands in the world and decades of creative, unique ads have helped make them one of the most

1:28.0

recognizable brands in the world. But recently, Coke has been changing its approach, working with

1:34.1

fewer Don Draper's and more artificial intelligence. We are finally starting to see the specter of

1:42.5

AI infiltrate our favorite ads.

...

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