Feature
Two routes out of frame, and both end in a finished ad
Plenty of founders will pay for ads and will not appear in them. Two routes here keep your face out. One renders a presenter from a photo of somebody who agreed in writing, at 320 credits per minute. The other keeps a person on camera and covers as much as the pace allows, up to 52 percent. Here is what each costs and which one your script needs.
- Credits per avatar minute
- 320
- Hard coverage ceiling
- 52%
- Credits per voice-over minute
- 70
Route one: a presenter who is not you, at 320 credits a minute
The avatar module takes a photo of a person and an audio track, and returns a lip-synced presenter video.
That output is a video take, so it enters the editor like a filmed one. Transcribed, cut, covered with footage on the words that need showing. Captioned, headlined, exported 9:16.
It costs 320 credits per rendered minute. Generated voice-over is 70 credits per minute if you are not recording the audio yourself.
The person in the photo must have agreed in writing. That rules out stock models unless the licence explicitly covers synthetic video, and it rules out public figures entirely.
Write short and cut to footage often. The illusion is strongest in bursts and thins over long holds.
A forty second ad, three ways to build it
Filming yourself is a third the price of the avatar route. Both include the batch and the export.
- You film it113 CR
- Avatar, your own audio326 CR
- Avatar, generated voice-over373 CR
Route two: a person on camera and footage over everything else
The second route keeps somebody on camera and covers as much of the ad as the pace allows. It is the cheaper of the two by a wide margin.
Coverage is capped by pace. 40 percent at chill, 45 at normal, 52 at fast. Even at the busiest setting somebody is on screen for close to half the ad.
That ceiling exists because ads which cross it stop reading as a person talking and start reading as a montage. The cap is the product declining to build the version that does not work.
Use it well and the route wins. Highlight the phrases that name the product, the number and the result. Those lines fill your forty percent on their own.
Highlight fewer phrases than the cap allows on the first pass. It is easier to add a shot than to work out which of eleven is making the ad feel busy.
Twenty five seconds of an ad at fast pace
52 percent is the ceiling. Twelve of those seconds still have a person in the frame.
This is the whole editor
Highlight a phrase and a clip lands on those exact words. No timeline, no keyframes, no layers.
Stock footage under a synthetic voice gets classified in under a second
The common faceless recipe is a generated voice reading a script over a montage of stock footage with captions on top. Fast, cheap, and now so recognisable that audiences classify it instantly.
The traits that made it easy to produce are the traits that mark it. Generic footage. Unbroken narration. Nobody on screen.
The awkward truth underneath is that faces are load-bearing in advertising. A person on screen gives the viewer somebody to believe or disbelieve.
Remove that and every claim has to stand on its own logic, which is a far higher bar than most scripts were written for.
So the useful question is not how do I make a faceless ad. It is which face, because a face other than yours is available for 320 credits a minute.
There is a cheaper version of the same instinct worth naming. Hands. A pair of hands using the product carries more of a demonstration than a narrator can, and hands are not a face.
What a montage tool does that this will not, and why the cap exists
A montage tool wins two rows. It makes an ad with nobody on screen at all, and it starts from a script with no recording behind it.
If wallpaper is genuinely the brief, that is the tool for it. It is also the format audiences classify fastest, which is the price of buying it.
Here every project starts with a video take and coverage tops out at 52 percent. The route to a take without filming yourself is the avatar module, which needs a photo and an audio file.
One recording gives you one language, because the transcript comes from the take.
The face has to be one you may use. No public figures, no stock portraits without an explicit synthetic-video licence, no colleagues who have not said yes in writing.
An anonymous ad is not as trustworthy as one with a real person in it. Sometimes that is the right trade, in categories where a buyer would rather not be seen browsing. It is still a trade worth making on purpose.
A montage tool against a talking-head editor
Two rows go to the montage tool. The five under them are why a faceless ad still needs somebody in it.
| A stock footage montage tool | Cutroom | |
|---|---|---|
| An ad with nobody on screen at all | Footage the whole way through | Coverage stops at 52 percent |
| Starting from a script alone | Paste text, get a montage | Every project starts with a video take |
| An ad nobody classifies in one second | The format is the tell | A person carries the read |
| Somebody to believe or disbelieve | No face carries the claim | A person on screen for about half the ad |
| Footage tied to the exact words spoken | Matched to keywords in the script | Cut to the run of words it covers |
| A presenter without using your own face | Nobody is on screen at all | A photo of a consenting person plus audio |
| Captions timed to a real voice | Timed to a synthetic read | Word-level timing from your own audio |
Twenty ads a month, or eight minutes of presenter footage. Pick one
The coverage route costs the same as any other ad here. 100 credits for the batch and 20 credits per minute of exported video, so around 110 for a finished short vertical ad.
The avatar route adds 320 credits per rendered minute on top of that. Another 70 per minute if the voice-over is generated too.
A forty second presenter read is about 213 credits of render, before the batch and the export.
The 7 day trial is 300 credits with no card. Basic is $39.99 a month for 2,500 credits. Premium is $79.99 for 5,000. A $15 top-up adds 1,000 credits.
So the coverage route runs at around twenty ads a month on Basic. The avatar route runs at closer to eight minutes of presenter footage. Plan the quarter around whichever number you need.
Questions people ask
- Can I make a video with no person in it at all?
- No. The editor builds from a talking-head take and footage coverage is capped between 40 and 52 percent depending on pace, so somebody is on screen for about half the ad.
- What is the closest thing to a faceless ad here?
- The avatar route: a photo of a consenting person plus a voice-over becomes a presenter video, which then runs through the editor. Your own face never appears.
- Why cap the footage coverage at all?
- Past roughly half, an ad stops reading as a person talking to you and starts reading as a montage. That shift is what makes the generic faceless format perform badly.
- What does the avatar route cost?
- 320 credits per minute of rendered presenter footage, plus 70 credits per minute if you need the voice-over generated as well.
- Is it right for every brief?
- It is built for ads that still have somebody in them, filmed or rendered. If a brief genuinely requires zero humans on screen, buy a montage tool for that one and bring the ads that need a face back here.
If your face cannot be in the ad, borrow one with permission in writing. Do not settle for wallpaper.