Deep Mist AI / Cost breakdown
Stock footage or AI video ads for your next campaign
This page compares building a vertical ad from licensed stock footage against commissioning AI-generated video from us. We sell the AI side, and we are saying that up front rather than hiding it. What follows is honest, including the cases where stock footage is plainly the better buy and we are not.
The short answer
Use stock footage when the ad sells a mood, a place or a lifestyle and never needs to show your actual product on screen, because that is where stock is fast, real and cheap. Use us when the ad has to show the product you sell and have a presenter say something specific about it, because a stock library holds footage of everything except the thing you are selling.
Line by line
What follows is line by line. Our side is our own published pack price. The stock side is a range drawn from publicly posted library pricing and freelance editing rate guides, not from your invoices, so price your own case against it.
Unlimited subscriptions are quoted at $15–$30 a month (Storyblocks) and from $16.50 a month on annual billing (Envato Elements); Artgrid from $239 a year. Bought singly, clips run $39 (Pond5) to $49 HD and $339 4K (Dissolve), with Getty at $199–$499 a download.
$95 for a single ad. Inside a pack it falls to $88.33 per ad (3-pack) or $74.50 per ad (10-pack).
What you download is raw material. Published rate guides put one finished short-form edit at $25–$75 from a beginner, $75–$200 mid-level and $200–$500 from a senior editor; hourly, $20–$45 rising to $85–$150+.
Included. What arrives is the finished vertical ad — cut, captioned, graded. There is no second invoice for assembly.
No library holds footage of your product. You cut around it with lookalikes, or you film the packshots yourself, or the product never appears at all.
Built from the product photos you already have, so the thing on screen is the thing you sell. Generated, not filmed, and labelled that way.
Nobody in a stock clip is saying your words. The ad becomes voiceover and captions laid over other people’s footage — a different format, not a cheaper version of the same one.
A lip-synced presenter delivering the script you approved, in the language you need. Disclosed as AI, and never presented as a testimonial.
Stock licenses are non-exclusive by design. The clip in your ad can legally run in a competitor’s ad, in the same feed, in the same week.
Rendered for your brief and not deposited in a library afterwards. Nobody else can license the shot you paid for.
Editorial-only clips cannot be used to promote or sell anything, and non-commercial terms bar commercial use outright. Wider rights are a tier above the standard one, priced accordingly.
One license, granted by us, with no expiry. There are no model releases to chase, because there is no model.
Genuinely real. A real coastline, real weather, a real crowd, shot on a real camera by a professional crew. Where the ad sells a place or a mood, that is the whole purchase.
We cannot do this at all. We own no camera and film nothing. If the ad needs real footage of the real world, license stock.
Nothing to disclose. The footage is photographic, so no platform AI label applies and no viewer has to be told anything.
Disclosed as AI wherever it runs. We think that is the right call, but it is a constraint the stock route simply does not carry.
Real footage that was made for nobody in particular, assembled by you into something that is yours. Fast, real, and shared with everyone else who licensed it.
A synthetic presenter, disclosed as AI, saying your words about your product. Good for testing what a hook does. Not a testimonial, and we never present it as one.
Stock-side ranges are from publicly posted 2026 rate guides, checked 7 August 2026: Archaius Creative, Stock Footage Licensing Sites & Pricing 2026 · Pixflow, Freelance Video Editing Rates 2026 · Envato Elements, Stock Footage for Commercial Use 2026. They are market ranges, not private invoices — your own quotes will differ. Our figures are the prices published on our own pricing page.
Where this comparison stops flattering us
The example above prices an editor. Many brands already have one. If someone on your team or your retainer cuts video anyway, an unlimited subscription makes the raw material near-free and the marginal cost of your next ad is time you are already paying for. Even hired out, the bottom of the published range for a short-form edit is $25–$75 — below our per-ad price in any pack. So “AI is cheaper than stock” is not true across the board. It is true when the editing labour lands on the invoice, and false when it is already on payroll. If you have an editor, the honest question is not price at all: it is whether the ad needs your product and your words on screen.
A worked example: three ads to test
Picture a brand that wants several short vertical ads to test against each other on paid social before spending behind whichever wins. That job prices very differently on each route, because re-cutting and re-voicing stock costs editing time where re-rendering ours does not. Stock also hands back real footage, which ours never can.
Route A — cut it from stock
- One month of an unlimited stock subscription$16.50–$30
- Three short-form edits, mid-level to senior$225–$1,500
- Voiceover, script and captionsyour time, or a freelancer on top
- Footage of your actual productnot in the library — still yours to shoot
Route B — our Ad Pack
- Ad Pack, three ads, one concept × three hooks$265
- Editing, captions and voiceincluded
- Your product in every shotfrom photos you already have
- 2 rounds of revisionsincluded
What that gap is actually buying. Route A returns three ads built from real footage of the real world, licensed by anyone who wants it, with your product absent unless you shoot it yourself. Route B returns three synthetic ones in which your actual product is on screen and a presenter says your hook out loud. If what you are testing is which opening line stops the scroll on your product, Route B answers that. If the ad sells a place, a season or a mood, stock was always the right library to open.
When stock footage is the better buy
Mood over product
When the ad sells atmosphere, scenery or a lifestyle and never needs your product in close-up, real filmed footage carries it better than anything generated.
Real places, real weather
Cities, crowds, weather, coastline and nature shot by a real crew still read as true in ways synthetic footage cannot match, so for these scenes start there.
You have an editor
If a brand already employs an editor, an unlimited subscription makes raw footage close to free, so the marginal cost of the next ad is mainly that person's time.
No AI disclosure
If the platform or the client requires footage with no synthetic origin and no disclosure label, real licensed stock is simply the only honest option on the table.
When AI production is the better buy
The product must show
When the ad must show your actual product, we build shots from your photographs, so viewers see the thing you sell rather than a generic stand-in.
Someone must say it
When a specific claim or hook has to come out of a presenter's mouth, lip-synced to camera, stock cannot help, because nobody in a library is speaking your script.
Cheap hook testing
Trying several openings against each other makes a fresh hook a re-render for us, not a fresh shoot or re-cut, so testing the openings costs you little.
Not in any library
Nothing on screen is licensable by a competitor, because the shots are built from your product and your script, so no rival can run the same ad as you.
Disclosure, both ways
Every frame we deliver is AI-generated and disclosed as such where the ad runs, and we think you should disclose too. Disclosure is not the disadvantage people assume, because major ad platforms now expect and accommodate it.
To close honestly: we sell the AI side of this comparison, and every frame we deliver is AI-generated. We have no client results to quote because we are new. The stock-side figures come from published library pricing and freelance rate guides, not private invoices, so please price your own case against each route.
We have no published reviews and no client results to quote. We are not going to borrow credibility we haven’t earned, so there are no invented case studies, engagement numbers or logos anywhere on this site.
Judge the work instead
We have no client reviews yet and will not invent any. Instead, alongside this page we publish full production breakdowns of how several ads were actually made, prompt to final cut, so you can judge the work on its own merits.