HelloFresh Deploys AI-Generated Ads in Times Square Using Hightouch’s Ad Studio

HelloFresh’s AI-Generated Ad Hits Times Square

In late June, customer data platform Hightouch transformed a Times Square billboard for a day into a showcase for AI-generated ads. Brands including meal-kit company HelloFresh, fast-casual chain Sweetgreen and travel site Tripadvisor supplied creative that their teams had produced using Hightouch’s new Ad Studio tool, part of an agentic marketing suite launched earlier this year.

HelloFresh’s US head of marketing, Conor Feeney, says the activation signals a response to an industry-wide squeeze: marketers are “under pressure to produce significantly more creative than ever before.” Shrinking attention spans mean fresh ad variants often outperform stale ones, he added, and AI lets companies “test much faster” to identify top-performing creative.

HelloFresh adopted Ad Studio to tackle the creative scaling challenge. The tool handles asset generation and deployment across ad platforms, drawing on a brand’s existing product catalogues, legal guidelines and past campaigns to keep the output on-brand. It does not manage media buying or budget allocation. The Times Square ad, which contrasted the high cost of takeout with the affordability of a HelloFresh meal, was created using the platform’s ability to quickly iterate — marketers can request “punchier” copy or a shift in product focus using natural language prompts.

Feeney stressed that the technology is intended to speed up, not replace, human creativity. “It doesn’t replace the creative thinkers on the team,” he said. HelloFresh plans to continue using Ad Studio for future activations, though to date this is the only campaign the company has produced with the tool.

Scaling Creative with AI: HelloFresh’s Strategy and the Broader Shift

Pressure to Scale Creative Drives AI Adoption

HelloFresh’s move illustrates a structural trend in digital marketing: the need for constant fresh creative across channels has outpaced manual production. AI tools like Ad Studio promise to close the gap by generating on-brand assets rapidly, but the real test is whether the output can match human-made quality. Feeney’s framing — continuous experimentation and testing — suggests HelloFresh views the tool as a way to run more variants without proportionally increasing headcount.

How Hightouch’s Guardrails Protect Brand Integrity

A key barrier for AI-generated ads has been the risk of diluting brand voice or violating compliance rules. Hightouch addresses this by ingesting a brand’s own content, from product catalogues to legal guidelines, rather than relying solely on generic large language models. The manual prompt-and-revise loop also keeps a human in the driver’s seat. However, the effectiveness of these guardrails hinges on the quality of the ingested data and the skills of the marketer crafting the prompts — variables that could make early results uneven.

The ROI of Faster Iteration

For HelloFresh, the immediate benefit is not just more ads, but faster testing. Shortening the cycle from idea to live ad can improve campaign performance, but it also raises the stakes: ineffective creative will fail just as quickly. The Times Square activation, while promotional for Hightouch, gave HelloFresh a low-risk, one-off opportunity to benchmark the tool’s output. Whether the company sees measurable improvements in click-through rates or cost-per-acquisition from future AI-generated campaigns remains to be seen.

What Marketing Leaders Can Take from HelloFresh’s AI Test

What Marketing Leaders Can Learn from HelloFresh’s Approach

• Start with a pilot like a one-day OOH activation. HelloFresh’s limited-scope Times Square test allowed the team to assess Ad Studio without committing large budgets or high-stakes campaigns. A similar low-risk trial can reveal how well an AI tool maintains brand standards before wider rollout.
• Evaluate AI creative tools on their ability to ingest your existing assets. Hightouch’s pull from product catalogues and past ads proved crucial for maintaining HelloFresh’s voice. Marketing teams should demand such native integrations and test how faithfully the tool adheres to brand guidelines.
• Build a prompt-fluent creative team, not just a technical one. Feeney emphasized that the tool requires “a talented, creative person” who can articulate why an ad works and translate that into natural language directions. Invest in training copywriters and designers to become effective AI collaborators.
• Adjust creative KPIs to track speed of iteration and brand consistency. As AI shrinks production cycles, traditional metrics like cost-per-asset become less meaningful. Instead, measure the number of test variations launched per campaign period, the time to first revision, and a consistency score evaluated by your brand team.
• Monitor Hightouch’s agentic marketing suite for broader adoption signals. With Sweetgreen and Tripadvisor also in the early user group, follow whether these brands publicly share performance data or expand usage — that can indicate whether the tool is moving beyond novelty.