The first move.

You direct. AI executes. That is the whole job, and it is the opposite of how most people use these tools: type a request, take whatever comes back, and decide the AI is average. The output was average because the request was.

This is the first move of the basics: the habit that makes every other AI-for-ads move work. It takes one sentence, it costs nothing, and it changes what comes back from the same model on the same task. If you have only ever chatted with ChatGPT, start here. If you already run ads with AI, check that you are actually doing it, because most people skip it.

By the end of this guide, twenty minutes from now, you will have four things:

1. 1
   The sentence, in muscle memory.

   You will stop typing a request without it.
2. 2
   Your brief.

   Five answers about your business, saved as a file, ready to paste into every ad task from now on.
3. 3
   Three hooks you could run this week.

   Built from your facts, with the second pass most people skip already done.
4. 4
   A way to tell good AI output from average.

   Once you have seen the interviewed version next to the thin one, you cannot unsee it.

It stops guessing and starts asking. Instead of an answer you get four or five questions: who this is for, what you are offering, what you can prove, what has worked before, what it must not say. Answer them, and then it does the task. Same model, same task, different output, because now it has the brief.

That is all the move is. The rest of this guide is what to do with the questions, because the quality of the answers you give is the quality of the ad you get back.

1. 1
   Write the task in one line.

   Plain words. “Write three Meta ad hooks for my meal-prep delivery service.” Not the whole backstory; the interview is where the backstory goes.
2. 2
   Add the sentence.

   Word for word. “Ask me whatever you need” is the part that matters. “To do this really well” tells it the bar.
3. 3
   Answer in bullet points.

   Short is fine. Specific matters more than polished. It is the brief a good copywriter would ask for, and you would not write that in paragraphs either.
4. 4
   Let it do the task. Then keep going.

   The first answer is not the one you use. “Then run it twice” is the second pass, and it is where the good version comes from.

Give it a thin question and it fills the gaps with averages: the average audience, the average offer, the average ad. It is not being lazy. It has nothing else to use. Every gap in your request gets filled with the most common thing anyone in your category would say, which is exactly the thing your customers have already scrolled past a hundred times.

The interview replaces the averages with your numbers. Your customer instead of a demographic, your price instead of “affordable”, your result instead of “proven”. The model was always capable of the specific version. It had no way to get there from what you typed.

One caveat, and it is the important one. The interview only works if you answer it truthfully and specifically. A vague answer to a good question gets you the average back, with extra steps.

The questions vary a little by model and by task, but for an ad they come down to five. Here is what each one is really asking, what a good answer looks like, and the weak answer most people give.

Say you run a meal-prep delivery service, the same business the Spy guide takes apart. You type the prompt above and it asks its five questions. Here is the brief you answer with. It took about four minutes, and none of it is polished.

Now it writes. What comes back is built from your facts, not the category’s. Three hooks, roughly:

1. 1
   “$18 for takeout again tonight? Five real dinners, $9 each, on your doorstep Sunday.”

   The enemy is takeout and the number leads. Your best post already proved the price is the hook.
2. 2
   “Coming off a 12-hour shift, the last thing you want to do is cook. So don’t.”

   Written to the nurse, not to “busy professionals”. That sentence only exists because you described her.
3. 3
   “’I stopped ordering in.’ Forty people said some version of that. Here’s what they’re eating.”

   Your proof, in your customers’ words. Nothing invented, because you gave it something real to use.

Notice what is not there: “healthy”, “delicious”, “convenient”, a weight-loss promise. It never had to be told twice, because you told it once, in the brief.

When it gives you something good, don’t use it yet. The first answer is the model’s best average of your brief. The second pass is where it gets specific about its own work. Ask:

Then run it again. Two passes beat one prompt, every time. Most people stop at the first answer, which is why most AI-written ads read like AI-written ads. Three more follow-ups that earn their keep. Use one, or all of them:

1. 1
   “What did you assume that I didn’t tell you?”

   It will list its guesses. Correct the wrong ones. This is the fastest way to find the gap in your own brief.
2. 2
   “Which of these would you cut, and why?”

   It is a better critic than it is a writer. Make it rank its own work before you do.
3. 3
   “Rewrite the strongest one three ways: shorter, number first, as a question.”

   Now you have versions with one thing different in each, which is what a real test needs.

Shorter, the number in it, the enemy named. Same brief, one more question.

1. 1
   Answering with a demographic.

   “Women 25 to 45” is not a person. Describe one customer you could name.
2. 2
   Skipping the proof.

   Leave the proof question thin and you get adjectives. Leave it out and some models fill it in, which is worse: now there is a number in your ad that isn’t true.
3. 3
   Pasting nothing that worked.

   You already ran the test. Your best post is data. Give it the data.
4. 4
   Taking the first answer.

   One pass gets you the average of your brief. The second pass is the whole point of “Then run it twice”.
5. 5
   Letting it decide.

   It drafts hooks. It does not know your margin, your refunds or your regulator. Every claim gets read by a person before it runs. That is the operator’s job, and it does not go away because the drafting got fast.

The five answers you gave are not a one-time thing. They are your brief, and every ad task from now on starts by pasting it in. Save them as a file: brief.txt, a note on your phone, anything. Update it when the offer changes, or when a new review says it better than you did.

That file is the beginning of a system. Turned into a skill, the same brief is something your agent reads on its own, so you stop pasting and start directing. But the file comes first, and it comes from this interview.