One Year of The Ghost Blog
One year, twenty-seven posts, and a craft nobody else was writing about. Ghost reflects on a year of treatment industry insights: what we planned, what surprised us, and why this niche needed a voice.
Category
Treatment Industry
17 posts
Client Psychology: How Agencies Really Read Your Treatment
How agencies evaluate treatments under pressure: the cognitive patterns, subconscious signals, and psychological biases that determine which pitches win beyond creative strategy.
Can You 'Hack' a Winning Treatment? The Psychology of Persuasion
Can you “hack” a winning treatment? This article explores the psychology of persuasion in commercial pitch documents — from primacy effect and loss aversion to visual rhythm and strategic repetition — and how subtle cognitive principles help treatments earn a confident yes.
What This Year’s Super Bowl Ad Break Tells Us About the Current State of Our Society, Trends, and Best Films
A sharp, first-impression analysis of the Super Bowl LX 2026 ad break, exploring nostalgia, AI, late capitalism, visual trends and the standout commercials that best captured the cultural moment.
Commercial Film Trends for 2026: An In-Depth Report by Ghost
An in-depth analysis of commercial film trends for 2026, exploring cinematic emotion, multi-frame storytelling, analogue nostalgia, documentary realism, surrealism, and how cultural change is reshaping visual advertising.
What We Learned From a Year in Treatments (2025)
An inside look at what changed in treatments during 2025 — from interactive, web-based experiences and docu-style realism to deeper director involvement, evolving design language, and the impact of AI on narrative development.
Why We Lowered Our Visual Research Rates
Ghost drops its visual research rates to reflect how AI tools reshaped the craft — but reminds us that human taste and curation still lead the way.
Why Sora 2 Flopped for Commercial Production
In September 2025, OpenAI released Sora 2 — a tool promising to generate realistic video from text prompts. But despite the hype, its impact on commercial production has been limited. This analysis explores why the advertising industry’s response to Sora 2 has been cautious, how its current capabilities fall short of professional standards, and what it means for producers, agencies, and visual researchers navigating the next wave of AI tools.
Who Should Be Paying for the Treatment?
Who should pay for commercial treatments? We break down the hidden costs, unfair practices, and collective solutions shaping the future of ad pitching.
The History of the Commercial Treatment
A deep dive into the surprising history of the commercial treatment — tracing its roots from 1930s Hollywood to the global advertising standard it is today. From reel-based pitching to magazine-style decks, this article explores how a quiet format became the world’s go-to tool for creative alignment and commercial persuasion.
Should Treatments Credit Visual Researchers?
A closer look at the role of visual researchers in treatments—and why acknowledging collaborators can strengthen, not threaten, a director’s vision.
What’s Taste?
The AI & Creativity Report keeps repeating “taste” like we all agree what it means. At Ghost, we break it down—and ask why it took AI for the industry to start valuing it.
We Used Veo 3 for a Treatment. This Is What Happened.
We tested Google’s Veo 3 for a real client treatment and documented everything — from the visual wins to the uncanny fails. In this hands-on case study, we explore what this new AI video tool gets right, what it misses, and whether it’s ready to replace human-led visual research in commercial treatments.
Design Trends in 2025: A Return to Texture, Type, and Tactility
In 2025, treatment design is rejecting hyper-modern polish in favor of tactile, expressive, and human-centered layouts. This blog post explores emerging design trends—from collage and low hierarchy to serif typography and analogue textures—shaping the look and feel of winning commercial pitches this year.
Image Research: What’s Trending in Photography for 2025
What does photography look like in 2025? From analogue textures to unfiltered emotion, this deep dive explores the biggest trends in image research, helping directors and designers select visuals that feel intentional, current, and full of soul.
AI in Commercial Treatments: Are We Really There Yet?
Explore how generative AI is changing commercial treatments, from Midjourney visuals to AI-generated storytelling. Are we truly ready for AI-driven pitches? Dive into the industry’s current landscape and future possibilities.
How Much Does a Treatment Cost?
A panel on the true cost of treatments sparked a broader conversation about creative labor, ethics, and burnout in advertising. Why are 90% of treatments never produced—and who’s paying the price?
