> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.thedaringcreatives.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # PJ Ace Made an NBA Finals Ad for $2,000 and Published the Prompts - URL: https://www.thedaringcreatives.com/creator-stories/pj-ace-nba-finals-ad/ - Published: 2026-07-20T21:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-24T10:25:47.000Z - Description: PJ Ace made the AI ad that ran during the NBA Finals for about $2,000 in three days — then published the entire workflow. Fifteen years of directing, 300-400 Veo generations, and a rule about never asking Gemini for more than 5 prompts at a time. - Author: William Smith - Tags: veo, ai filmmaking, artist profile, creators, ai tools, #issue-2026-07, Creator Stories, ai-video, opinion, #medium:Commercial, #method:Mixed, #tool:Veo, #tool:Kling, #tool:Suno, #tool:Seedance, #tool:Nano Banana, #tool:After Effects PJ Ace is the AI filmmaker behind the ad most people point to when they argue about whether AI commercials are actually here: the unhinged Kalshi spot that aired during Game 3 of the 2025 NBA Finals. Made with Google's Veo 3 for [about $2,000 in AI production costs](https://www.npr.org/2025/06/23/nx-s1-5432712/ai-video-ad-kalshi-advertising-nba-finals?ref=thedaringcreatives.com), idea to on-air in two to three days, working mostly alone. Within a week it had over 3 million views on Kalshi's X account. The part that makes him worth profiling is what he did next: he posted the whole recipe. PJ Ace — the Kalshi NBA Finals ad, on his YouTube channel ## The workflow, in his own words PJ Ace is PJ Accetturo, a director with 15-plus years in commercials and TV before AI tools showed up — Toyota, Red Bull, the Atlanta Braves, and co-creating the animated series Ghosts of Ruin. After the Kalshi ad aired, he broke down the process in an [X thread](https://x.com/PJaccetturo/status/1932893260399456513?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) that NPR and Business Insider both picked apart. The script comes first, co-written with an LLM: "I co-write with Gemini (or ChatGPT) asking it for ideas, picking the best ones, and shaping them into a simple script." For Kalshi, the client handed him lines of dialogue they wanted included, and he invented the characters to say them. Then the script becomes prompts — with a constraint he's specific about: "I always tell it to return 5 prompts at a time — any more than that and the quality starts to slip." Each prompt describes its scene completely, as if Veo has no memory of the shot before or after it, which is what keeps characters and settings consistent. Then volume. "This took about 300–400 generations to get 15 usable clips." When a generation misses, the prompt goes back into Gemini with a request for changes. The final edit and music happen in ordinary editing software. PJ Ace — his behind-the-scenes breakdown of the Kalshi ad, on YouTube ## The $500 spec ad that started it Three weeks before Kalshi, he posted Puppramin — a fake pharmaceutical commercial for a pill that summons puppies. His caption on it, from [the X post](https://x.com/PJaccetturo/status/1925464847900352590?ref=thedaringcreatives.com): "I used to shoot $500k pharmaceutical commercials. I made this for $500 in Veo 3 credits in less than a day. What's the argument for spending $500K now?" That's the spec ad that reportedly got Kalshi's attention. But he pushes back on the idea that cheap means easy — "Just because this was cheap doesn't mean anyone can do it. I've been a director 15+ years." His take on where the leverage moved, [via PetaPixel](https://petapixel.com/2025/06/12/the-most-unhinged-ai-generated-gambling-ad-ran-during-the-nba-finals/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com): "Right now the most valuable skill in entertainment and advertising is comedy writing." PJ Ace — "Puppramin," the pre-Kalshi spec ad, on YouTube ## Now it's an agency He runs Genre AI, an AI-native ad agency built as "pods" of writers, directors, cinematographers, and editors with traditional film backgrounds. Per [an interview with The brAIn](https://themediabrain.substack.com/p/ais-disruption-of-advertising-and), the client list grew to Popeyes, Qatar Airways, Oracle, and David Beckham's supplement brand IM8\. The Popeyes job was an AI diss-track ad answering McDonald's Snack Wrap relaunch, built in about three days with Veo 3 and Suno. The Qatar Airways job is the one that shows how far the workflow has evolved past "prompt and pray." Per [his own case study](https://pjace.beehiiv.com/p/qatar-airways?ref=thedaringcreatives.com), he made two ads in 14 hours aboard a live flight: reference photography of the real cabin ("CRITICAL in getting near-perfect details"), shots laid out in Figma, characters composited into base frames with Nano Banana over dozens of iterations, animation in Veo 3.1 — "Simple prompts work best" — and a Suno music bed that human musicians then customized. "Sky Studio: Above the Clouds," made by PJ Ace's team — via Qatar Airways' official YouTube channel The PJ Ace stack — tools he credits himself - [Gemini](https://gemini.google.com/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) / [ChatGPT](https://openai.com/chatgpt/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) — script co-writing, then converting shots into prompts (5 at a time) - [Veo 3 / 3.1](https://deepmind.google/models/veo/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) — video generation, hundreds of takes per spot - **Nano Banana** — compositing characters into base shots (Qatar Airways workflow) - [Figma](https://www.figma.com/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) — shot layout - [Suno](https://suno.com/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) — first-pass music beds, refined by human musicians - [After Effects](https://www.adobe.com/products/aftereffects.html?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) — transitions and finishing - **Seedance 2.0** and [Kling](https://www.klingai.com/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com) — the newer additions, per his 2026 newsletter guides From his own X threads and newsletter case studies. Nano Banana and Seedance left unlinked pending confirmed official URLs. ## What he says no to He turned down a Super Bowl ad for a big brand because they wanted a tearjerker, and in his view the models can't deliver one yet — "AI is not meant for every campaign." The line from the same interview that sums up his position on why experienced directors aren't obsolete: "We cannot teach taste in a day." He keeps publishing, though. The prompts, the budgets, the workflow changes — all of it lands in [his newsletter](https://pjace.beehiiv.com/?ref=thedaringcreatives.com), most recently guides to Seedance 2.0\. For anyone building things with AI video, it's one of the few places where a working director shows the receipts while the work is still shipping.