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A free guide by Mariah Brunner ↗ INSTAGRAM ↗ TIKTOK

I Put My Brand
On National TV With Claude

How to get your ad on TV with Universal Ads, from copy-and-paste Claude prompts for building your campaign to connecting Claude via MCP for reporting.

Start with Universal Ads →

Sign up with code UAMARIAH for $1,000 in matched ad spend

Universal Ads lets you buy TV and streaming commercials yourself, the way you’d buy social ads. You pick a goal, an audience and a budget, with no minimum spend.

Every prompt below works in a regular Claude chat. Nothing to install.

Step 1: Make Your Ad TV-Ready

You don’t need a new shoot. Paste and edit the prompt below for Claude to create a :30 and a :15 from footage you already have, then check your exported file against Universal Ads’ creative requirements.

Plan My TV Cut
I'm making a TV commercial for Universal Ads from footage I already have. My brand and what I sell: [ ] My offer or main message: [ ] The footage I have: [describe it, or upload a few stills] Plan a :30 and a :15 cut, shot by shot, with the voiceover and any on-screen text. Show my brand name and logo in the first 5 seconds and again at the end. Write it for sound on. Don't say "click," "tap" or "swipe," because people can't click a TV. End with one simple next step, like my website or a name to search. After I export, I'll give you my file details. Check them against Universal Ads' requirements and tell me exactly what to fix: - 1920 x 1080, 16:9 - .mp4 or .mov, H.264 recommended - 10 Mbps or higher, 250 MB max - 23.98, 24, 25 or 30 fps - Exactly 15.0, 30.0 or 60.0 seconds - Audio at 48 kHz, 192 kbps or higher, loudness around -24 LUFS (give or take 2)

No footage at all? Universal Ads has a built-in AI Video Generator that makes a 15-second ad from your website or marketing assets.

Step 2: Plan The Campaign

Claude interviews you, then gives you a plan that matches the screens in Universal Ads Manager: campaign, ad sets and ads. You type it in, with everything paused until you’re ready.

TV Media Planner
Be my TV media planner for Universal Ads. Ask me one question at a time, and guess first when you can so I just confirm or correct you: - What I sell, where I sell it, and my website - Who buys from me - My goal: getting known (Awareness) or driving website sales (Conversions) - My total budget and how many weeks I want to run - Whether the Universal Ads Pixel is on my website Then give me a plan I can type straight into Universal Ads Manager: - Campaign: Performance+ or Content Select and why, the objective (Conversions only if my pixel is installed), and a lifetime budget with start and end dates. - Ad sets: up to 3, each with who it targets, the locations (states, DMAs or ZIP codes), and a daily and lifetime budget. - A holdout: 2 or 3 areas similar to my targets that I should exclude, so I can compare them later. - Ads: which of my :15 and :30 cuts goes in each ad set. If my account is new, keep my total daily spend under $1,000. Tell me to set everything to Paused while I build it. Never make up numbers about my business. If you need one, ask me.
Step 3: Before You Launch
  1. Use code UAMARIAH when you sign up. New advertisers get $1,000 in matched spend.
  2. Add the Universal Ads Pixel to your website. You need it for the Conversions objective, and it ties site visits back to your ad.
  3. Know the cap. New accounts have a daily spend limit of $1,000 that rises as you build payment history. Ads pause when you hit it and pick back up the next day.
  4. Plan for review. Creatives are reviewed every business day. Most ads can serve once published. Alcohol, gambling, crypto and political ads wait for approval.
  5. Set end dates, switch from Paused to Active, and check your dashboard daily the first week.
Step 4: See If It Worked

People don’t click a TV, so you judge it on what moves around it. In Ads Manager, open the Manage Ads dashboard, pick your dates, click Export, and break the report out by day and by DMA or ZIP. It downloads as a CSV. (How to download a report)

Then paste this with the CSV and your website numbers. The holdout areas from your plan are what make this work: they show what would have happened without the ad.

TV Results Check
I ran a TV campaign on Universal Ads. I'm attaching: - My Universal Ads report export (CSV), broken out by day and by DMA or ZIP code - My website visits and sales by day, for the 2 weeks before the campaign and during it - My holdout areas: [list them] In plain words, tell me: 1. How many impressions I got and what I paid per 1,000 (CPM) 2. Whether website visits, sales and people searching my brand name went up during the campaign 3. How the areas that saw my ad changed compared to my holdout areas 4. Whether I should keep going, change something or stop, and what to test next Use only my numbers. If something is missing, say so. Tell me how confident you are, because TV results are a signal, not proof.
Optional: Connect Claude To Your Account

Want Claude to read your campaigns and reports directly, without exporting? Universal Ads has an official MCP that connects Claude Code to your account. It’s read-only, so Claude can look at everything but can’t change or spend anything.

  1. Get your keys. In the Universal Ads Developer Portal, create an app with only the Ad read-only and Account read-only scopes. Save the API Key and Private Key, wait for approval, then authorize the app for your organization.
  2. Install it. Open Claude Code and paste this. Claude does the setup and keeps your keys out of the chat.
Install The Universal Ads MCP
Install the official Universal Ads MCP from https://github.com/Universal-Ads/universal-ads-mcp for this Claude Code setup. Follow its README step by step, tell me anything I need to install first, and ask me to paste my API Key and Private Key straight into the .env file myself, so they never go into this chat. When it's done, test it by listing my Universal Ads organizations and ad accounts.

Once it’s connected, skip the export in Step 4 and say: "Pull my latest Universal Ads report and run the results check."

Start with Universal Ads →

Sign up with code UAMARIAH for $1,000 in matched ad spend