AI won its place in ad creative on economics alone. 83% of ad executives say their company now uses AI somewhere in the creative process, up from 60% in 2024. Nobody needed convincing.
Trust is the part economics never bought. 73% of consumers say knowing an ad was made with AI would either increase their likelihood to purchase or make no difference at all, yet fewer than half of advertisers disclose it. The industry is paying a trust cost to avoid a disclosure most people would shrug at.
That is the thinking behind the AI label we rolled out in August.
What is the Adskeeper AI label?
The AI label is a disclosure marker attached to any creative generated fully or partially with the AI tools available in the Adskeeper system. It appears on the ad as an AI ⓘ icon. Clicking it opens our DSA landing page for EU users, which explains that the content was generated fully or partially using AI.
It states a production fact and nothing else. It also puts us on the right side of Article 50 of the EU AI Act, which requires AI-generated or manipulated content to be clearly marked and detectable in machine-readable form.
How does the AI label build trust?
By replacing a suspicion with a fact. Readers already assume AI is in the mix: 71% of Gen Z and Millennial consumers believe they have seen an AI-generated ad. What they have never had is a straight answer about which one, and assumption is always harsher than disclosure.
The opportunity sits in the distance between what the industry believes about its audience and what the audience actually thinks. IAB and Sonata Insights surveyed 505 consumers and 104 industry executives between October 2025 and January 2026 and found a 37-point spread between the two. Closing that spread has been treated as a branding problem for two years. It is a labeling problem, and labeling is cheap.
There is a second effect that compounds. When every AI creative carries the marker, the marker stops signaling anything unusual. It becomes ordinary, like a sponsored tag, and it does a quietly useful job: answering a question the reader was going to ask anyway, before they answer it themselves and get it wrong.
For a publisher, that lands where it matters most. Inventory that explains itself reads as a site that respects the people reading it.
What creatives get an AI label?
Everything produced with an in-platform AI tool, whether an advertiser made it or our own design team did.
| Creative type | How it gets labeled |
|---|---|
| Images | Generated or edited with in-platform AI image tools: CTR Guard automatic and manual generations, image generators and the editor inside the creative creation form |
| Motion creatives | Labeled when generated from a static creative |
| Text | Generated with the in-platform AI text tool, for AI-impacted categories only |
| Internal design team assets | Labeled automatically based on the saved image source when our designers use AI tools |
| Rich Media | Labeled via a checkbox set by the designer building the asset |
Setup work is zero. Advertisers get no extra field, no checkbox and no second creative version to maintain, and bulk uploads behave the same way. Publishers install nothing: the label travels with the creative through moderation and delivery, with no new tags, widget updates or code changes.
Which text categories fall under AI labeling?
Text labeling applies to AI-impacted categories, the ones where accuracy carries real consequences for the reader. Three groups:
- Health and medical: Alternative Medicine, Blood Disorders, Cancer, Diabetes, Infectious Diseases, Medical Services, Sexual Health, Skin Care, Weight Loss
- Financial: Financial Assistance, Insurance, Options, Personal Debt
- News and social: General Social, News and Politics
What does the AI label mean for publishers?
It means the trust layer on your inventory gets handled at network level, without a revenue trade-off.
| What you get | What it does for your site |
|---|---|
| Automatic AI disclosure across images, motion, text, Rich Media | Meets Article 50 marking expectations without dev work or tag changes |
| In-house creatives labeled on the same terms | No exemption for network-produced assets running on your pages |
| DSA landing page for EU users | The explanation lives with us, not on your site |
| Same moderation standard on every creative | Labeling adds information, it does not replace review |
| Full demand pool, unchanged | No advertiser is penalized in the auction for using AI tools |
Your fill and your payouts are not the price of doing this properly. The label adds an information layer to creatives that were already going to run, and it does that on the side of the trade where readers form their opinion of your site.
To see what is currently serving on your widgets, check your publisher dashboard. For format-level detail on how these creatives appear in placement, see the native ad formats overview.