15x More Assets, 75% Faster: How Mid-Tier Marketers Are Catching Up on AI Creative

AI-powered creative production is no longer just for mega-brands. A new wave of mid-tier advertisers — companies with annual revenues under a billion dollars — is now scaling AI creative infrastructure that until recently only the Unilevers and L'Oréals of the world could afford.

Who's Doing It and What They're Seeing

Three brands illustrate the shift clearly:

• Wyndham Hotels & Resorts ($1.43B revenue): Using AI platform Adora to generate creative assets for Instagram, Wyndham's team now produces 15 times the volume of assets they created before. Production and approval time dropped 75%. The brand has seen a 6x improvement in site visit rate against its benchmark.
• Opella (spun out of Sanofi in 2025): An 85-person team uses generative AI to write strategy briefs and produce creative assets, including animated brand mascots. The company now generates 20 times its previous content output — over 20,000 pieces produced to date.
• BetMGM: Running a limited AI creative rollout using Arcana AI, with some production still reserved for human staff due to regulatory constraints in sports betting.

What's Enabling the Shift

The Brandtech Group's Pencil platform is the backbone for several of these implementations. Pencil CEO Will Hanschell notes that its fastest-growing client segment is companies with under $1 billion in annual revenue. Compute costs have also dropped sharply — the price American businesses pay per million tokens fell 41% from its peak in March 2026.

Key Takeaway

The barrier to scaled AI creative isn't budget anymore — it's organizational readiness. Platforms that handle the technical lift and companies that commit to internal AI creative teams are outpacing those still treating AI as a vendor add-on.

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