| Audience | How you'll use this article |
|---|---|
| Marketers | Understand what Ad Studio does, how the creation workflow works, and how to go from a brief to a launched ad. |
| Data teams | Understand how Ad Studio connects to your ad platforms and what workspace setup your marketers depend on. |
Ad Studio generates ad creatives based on your brand guidelines, product catalog, and performance data. You describe what you need, review the output, iterate with the agent or a visual editor, and launch to your connected ad platforms.
What you'll learn
- What Ad Studio does and how it works
- How to access Ad Studio
- Core features: creation modes, Styles, Insights, Product catalog, and Assets
- How to get started, by role
- When to use Ad Studio vs. other Hightouch products
- How Ad Studio fits into the broader Hightouch platform
Overview
Ad Studio is where you create, iterate, and launch paid media creatives. You provide a starting point — a brief, a product from your catalog, an existing ad, a competitor reference, or a trending topic — and the agent drafts ad creatives based on your brand context and asset library. You refine the output using the agent chat or a built-in visual editor, then launch to your connected ad platforms.
Ad Studio also connects to your ad platform performance data, so you can identify fatiguing creatives, analyze competitor ads, and create new ads based on what's performing.
Example: Refresh a fatiguing ad with a new variant
Your Meta prospecting campaign has been running the same creative for three weeks and CTR is declining. In Ad Studio, you open Insights, find the fatiguing ad, and select Create ad. The agent drafts fresh variants that use your brand guidelines and asset library. You pick the strongest option, adjust the headline in the visual editor, and launch the new creative to the same campaign — without leaving Ad Studio.
Example: Respond to a competitor ad
Your competitor just launched a campaign promoting a feature you also offer. You upload a screenshot of their ad, select Riff on a competitor, and the agent drafts your own on-brand response using your brand guidelines, product messaging, and assets. You review the creative, iterate on the copy, and launch it to your ad platforms.
Access Ad Studio
- Go to app.hightouch.com.
- In the left sidebar, select Ad Studio.
Core features
Ad creation modes
Describe what you want in the text input and the agent drafts creatives based on your brand guidelines and asset library. You can also select one of five guided creation modes for a more structured starting point.
| Mode | When to use it |
|---|---|
| Upload a brief | You have a campaign description or creative idea and want the agent to draft ads from scratch. |
| Choose a product | You want product-focused ads and have a product catalog configured. |
| Upload an ad and create variants | You have an existing ad that's performing well and want to create variations for testing or refresh. |
| Riff on a competitor | You've seen a competitor ad you want to respond to with your own on-brand version. |
| Ride a new trend | There's a cultural moment or trending topic you want to tie your brand to with timely creative. |
See Ads for detailed walkthroughs of each mode.
Styles
Styles are reusable visual guidelines that anchor ad generation to a specific look and feel. Each style defines visual dimensions — palette, layout, subjects, mood — with reference images and examples. Select a style during ad creation to keep generated creatives consistent with a defined visual direction. Styles are tied to a brand profile and available across all projects.
Insights
Insights has four tabs — Performance, Fatigue, Competitors, and Signals — that show how your ads are performing, which creatives have declining engagement, what competitors are running, and real-time market signals you can act on. You can create new ads directly from any Insights tab based on what you find.
Product catalog
The product catalog connects your product data to Ad Studio so the agent can draft product-focused ads with accurate product images and details. This is optional — you don't need a product catalog for brand or campaign ads.
Assets
Assets are the images, components, videos, and other creative files Ad Studio draws from when generating ads. You can upload assets manually or sync them from connected ad platforms.
Get started
You can start creating ads in Ad Studio once at least one ad platform is connected. Adding brand context — profiles, guidelines, and assets — improves the quality of generated creatives, and you can refine it over time.
For platform admins
These steps are typically done once during initial workspace setup. Connecting an ad platform is the only hard requirement — the rest improve output quality and unlock additional capabilities.
| What to do | What it unlocks |
|---|---|
| Connect your ad platforms | Required. Ad Studio launches ads to and pulls performance data from your connected platforms. |
| Create a brand profile | Tells the agent about your brand, products, audience, and goals so it can draft relevant creatives |
| Upload brand guidelines | Controls the visual and tonal rules the agent follows — colors, typography, logo usage |
| Upload logo files and fonts | Gives the agent your brand's logos and typography for use in ad creatives |
| Set guardrails | Controls what image modifications the agent is allowed to make |
Ad Studio does not require a CDP deployment or warehouse connection. Brand context, guidelines, and channel connections are all managed in Context Hub.
For marketers and creative teams
Once the workspace is set up, seed the creative inputs the agent draws from, then start creating ads. You can refine these over time as you learn what works.
| What to do | Why |
|---|---|
| Upload assets | Gives the agent images, logos, and creative files to use directly in ads |
| Configure a product catalog | Lets the agent use accurate product images, descriptions, and pricing in product-focused ads |
| Add context cards | Provides metric definitions, campaign formats, and organizational knowledge |
Once you have assets uploaded, go to Ad Studio → Ads and select Create ad. Most teams start with Upload a brief — describe a campaign idea and the agent drafts creatives for you to review and iterate on. From there, explore Insights to find optimization opportunities and try the other creation modes as your workflow develops.
When to use Ad Studio
Ad Studio is the right choice when you need to create paid media creatives — display ads, social ads, and similar formats — for your connected ad platforms.
| Scenario | Recommended approach |
|---|---|
| Create ad creatives from a brief, product, or existing ad | Ad Studio |
| Generate variants of a winning ad for A/B testing | Ad Studio — Upload an ad and create variants |
| Identify fatiguing creatives and generate replacements | Ad Studio — Insights |
| Create lifecycle campaign content (email, push, SMS) | Lifecycle Studio — focuses on ESP-delivered content, not paid media |
| Optimize which message, channel, and timing each user receives | AI Decisioning |
| Build audiences from warehouse data and sync to ad platforms | Customer Studio |
| Measure campaign performance across channels with unified metrics | Intelligence |
How Ad Studio fits into Hightouch
Ad Studio sits between your brand context and your ad platforms. It uses context from Context Hub and produces ad creatives that launch to your connected platforms.
What Ad Studio uses
- Brand profiles and guidelines — business context, brand guidelines, logos, and fonts configured in Context Hub → Brands.
- Context cards and guardrails — organizational knowledge, metric definitions, and image modification rules from Context Hub → Context.
- Ad platform performance data — campaign metrics from connected channels in Context Hub → Connections, surfaced in Insights to inform creative decisions.
- Product catalog — product names, images, descriptions, and pricing from your connected product data source.
- Assets — images, logos, and creative files uploaded in Assets that the agent can use directly in ad creatives.
What Ad Studio sends
- Ad creatives to your ad platforms — finished ads launch directly to your connected platforms. Connect platforms in Context Hub → Connections.
- Exports to Figma — creatives can be handed off to your design team for further refinement.
Ad Studio vs. Lifecycle Studio
Both products use the agent to draft marketing content, but they serve different channels. Lifecycle Studio focuses on lifecycle campaigns — email, push, SMS — exported to an ESP. Ad Studio focuses on paid media creatives — display ads, social ads — launched to ad platforms. The two products share the same agent infrastructure and Context Hub but have distinct workflows.
Permissions
Ad Studio is currently in beta. To enable it for your workspace, contact your Hightouch account team or reach out to support.
Once enabled, access is controlled through custom roles. In Settings → Groups, edit the custom role and navigate to the Agents Context Manager section. The relevant grants are Can this role access Agents? and Can this role configure Agents?. Users need at least the access grant to view Ad Studio. See Roles for the full list of grants.
Ad Studio never launches an ad without your approval. You always review and approve generated creatives before they go live.