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Based on the keynote presented by Tara Nixon, Business Development Director at Leadzai, for Siinda Marbella, October 2026.
Introduction
Tara Nixon Leadzai’s Business Development Director, has over 20 years of experience in digital marketing. In her keynote at Siinda in Marbella, she explained how AI is rewriting the rulebook for video advertising and how it helps agencies make compelling video marketing faster, smarter, cheaper, and, in her words, more fun than ever before.
The session explored how Leadzai turns the conversation around AI from “we should probably use AI” to “here’s how we use it and here’s the ROI data behind it.” She covered the evolution of the industry, the power of video and TikTok as a platform, a live video demonstration, how Leadzai uses Gen AI, and real-world case studies with campaign results.
01. A market moving towards video
Digital advertising as a market is growing 10% each year. Within it, one format stands out: video advertising, which grew 20% year-on-year reaching £9.3billion, making it the fastest-growing major format and representing 23% of total digital advertising spend. [1]
02. The evolution of the advertising industry
The keynote framed the journey of advertising as a progression of ad formats, each moving further from a simple click towards true entertainment and towards user engagement:
03. Video adoption: what the numbers show
Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing 2026 report shows how widely businesses use video today and what prevents others from adopting it. [2]
The cited report also goes into video success metrics and how businesses are measuring results:
Why some businesses haven't adopted video yet
The two main reasons businesses give for not using video are that they feel it is too expensive and that they simply don’t have time to create it. [2]
Cost has been a major barrier for businesses in the past. Tara noted that, just two years ago, producing a quality marketing video could have cost an SMB between £1,000 and £10,000, with the process taking months from onboarding to launch. Today, Gen AI offers a faster, simpler and more affordable way to create videos, a process explored in more detail in this paper. [2] This makes video ad scaling a possibility for all agencies serving SMB communities around the world.
The keynote left the audience with two questions: if you’re not using video, what’s stopping you? And when did you last update your agency’s video offering to reflect how the industry has evolved over the past year?
04. The Power of TikTok
Under the banner of “Watch it. Love it. Want it.”, the presentation highlighted the following TikTok power stats:
05. Full-funnel advertising, made super simple
Video opens up new metrics, drives awareness and a wider reach. Leadzai presents this as omnichannel advertising made simple: one platform and workflow, simplifying how you scale, across Google, Meta, Microsoft and TikTok.
Thanks to third-party (3P) integration, agencies can start using TikTok as a new advertising channel as early as next week, without the need for first-party (1P) development. This allows agencies to manage the entire customer journey, from building awareness to driving conversions and encouraging brand loyalty, all in one place:
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06. Gen AI: from an image and a prompt to compelling video ads
Leadzai describes its approach as people-first (creativity), with a Gen AI-assisted workflow. The workflow starts with image and logo uploads, an AI story template and ends in compelling video ads with music, voiceovers and CTAs added. The aim is to enable agencies globally to make video marketing faster, smarter, cheaper and more ‘fun’ than ever before. When discussing the power of Gen AI template, Tara states: “If you can imagine it, then you can prompt it.”.
07. Seeing it in action: TikTok made me buy it
Tara highlighted it would be odd to talk about the power of video without playing one. During the session, she presented a video demonstration that brought the entire workflow to life, from creation to the final purchase journey. This can be watched here:
08. Case studies: show me the data!
The presentation also featured three real client case studies from across Europe, drawing on internal TikTok campaign data gathered by Leadzai’s Business Operations team over a 30-day period, up to 30 September 2026:
The luna segment covered key takeaways, learnings on app install & registration rates and live campaign data from one month of collaboration.
09. Conclusion: remove the barriers and pain for SMBs
The presenter’s notes close on a clear principle for anyone serving small businesses. There is demand for a full DIFM offering, because business owners are already wearing too many hats, doing too many items on a never-ending to-do list. They are not marketing experts, and they don’t want to be, so the job is to remove the pain points, remove historical blockers (like time and creation costs) and not bamboozle them into boredom with marketing jargon.
Video is the format growing the fastest [1], and Gen AI is the lever Leadzai is using to make it faster, smarter and cheaper than ever before to produce engaging video ads at scale, to pass on the benefits to your SMB clients, alongside introducing TikTok as an exciting new channel option within their our platform.
Want to know more?
If you’d like to see how Leadzai can support you in scaling your SEM offering to include TikTok as a channel and scale your Search and Social ads to work more profitably, please book a demo call with the team today:
Sources
[1] IAB UK, March 2026
[2] Wyzowl, State of Video Marketing 2026 https://wyzowl.com/
[3] TikTok Internal Data, Global, 2025 https://ads.tiktok.com/business/en-US/insights/
[4] Statista, TikTok Worldwide insights 2026
[5] Built on TikTok: Small Business Showcase, May 2026 https://newsroom.tiktok.com/built-on-tiktok-celebrating-the-thriving-small-business-community?lang=en
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