Generating one minute of AI-powered video with Google’s new model will cost users $30.
Google’s video AI model Veo 2 debuted last December. Now, the cost has been announced, and it’s a high price tag. Each second of video generated from a text prompt will cost $0.50.
The new pricing is a bar being set, and it’s such a high price that its clear consumers and small businesses are not the target audience. Google is likely aiming for a customer base of large marketing corporations. Here’s what to know about the news.
How Veo 2’s Price Model Works
A quiet update to the company’s AI model pricing page has ushered in the news, now covered by TechCrunch and others. While the Gemini model is charged per input token, the Veo 2 model keeps things even more simple. There’s no batch pricing discount or any need for tokens: Just “$0.50 per second” in the price field.
This adds up to $30 per minute, or $1,800 per hour. A feature-length film would cost $3,600 if it ran for two hours.
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However, that’s only if you used the very first draft of every clip. While Google hasn’t elaborated, it’s very likely that each refinement counts as a new clip and will cost an additional 50 cents per second. If your company needs to create five drafts before getting a video that works, your marketing budget for the project will need to quintuple.
If recent AI-generated advertisements are any indicator of the future of the medium, your team will also need to edit the results: The logos in Coca-Cola’s AI-generated Christmas ad likely weren’t generated by AI quite as pristinely as they appeared in the final product.
What’s the AI Video Endgame?
Google says that the Veo 2 model can create video clips that are two minutes or longer, which is quite an upgrade over the quick clips that most models can generate with one prompt. However, generating longer clips at once may also mean that revisions will be more costly, since an entire two additional minutes may need to be generated for each update.
Google DeepMind researcher Jon Barron noted on X that Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame movie cost around $32,000 per second, or about a thousand times more than Veo 2 would have cost. Granted, I doubt many people can earn a $2,799,439,100 worldwide box office with their AI creation, either.
We’ll have to see how (or if) this new technology reshapes mid-sized business’ marketing plans. It’s certainly possible that Veo 2-generated advertisements will start proliferating soon.
Unfortunately, it’s also possible that the same companies who want to save money by AI-generating their ads won’t be interested in shelling out for the further drafts and revisions needed to make ads that are good, and not just acceptable. The true endgame here might just be an uptick in AI slop.
AI Video Models Continue to Evolve
Google’s video creation tool is entering an already packed market: Amazon has its own AI video tool, launched in December, while OpenAI has Sora and Adobe includes video AI tools in its software.
Plus, if Veo 2’s 50-cents-a-second price tag is too high for you, plenty of free options are still available, from Deepbrain AI to talking-head-generator Synthesia.
The truly savvy marketing creative, however, might be suddenly interested in puppets, stop-motion, hand-drawn animation, or any other medium too idiosyncratic for AI to actually recreate: The way to win in marketing is to go against the grain, and in 2025, that’s by avoiding AI whenever possible.
