How One Ecommerce Company Used AI to Get a 3,000% Return on Ad Spend

Naomi Simson is an entrepreneur who hosts the popular Shark Tank Australia. But she was also a business owner with a problem.

她在AI AI Institute的電話采訪中說：“我不敢相信我們在數字營銷問題上投入了多少錢。”BETVlCTOR1946伟德

Simson co-founded紅球, an online marketplace for gifts and experiences. Since 2001, customers have bought everything from outdoor adventures to cooking classes—for themselves or as a present for someone else.

Redballoon每月為多家廣告代理商花費超過45,000美元的固定器。該公司對這些機構的工作幾乎沒有透明度，但是西姆森確實知道她每個客戶收購要支付50美元或更多。

她說：“這隻是不可持續的。”“我們被贖金。”

在絕望中，西姆森和她的團隊研究了解決這個問題的潛在解決方案。他們偶然發現AI in advertising。

Getting More Out of Ads with AI

Redballoon最大的痛點是付費廣告。付費是一個主要的收購渠道，但該公司擅長於此。

“We didn’t know how to do lookalike audiences or target and retarget correctly,” Simson says.

Simson and team heard about a solution called Albert that used AI to power paid media and marketing programs. Albert,which we’ve profiled in the past，分析整個廣告帳戶和客戶數據庫中的數據，然後使用複雜的機器學習來定位，運行和優化廣告係列。

西姆森很感興趣。

To start, her and the team ran a test of Albert over a few months.

結果令人印象深刻。

“In the first three months, we saw actual material results,” she says.

From the start, Albert was doing things that humans were incapable of doing—or incapable of doing at scale. On day one, the platform tested 6,500 variations of a Google text ad. From there, it learned more and more from RedBalloon’s data and further optimized the company’s ad campaigns on Facebook and Google.

The results were so striking and immediate that Simson fired her ad agencies.

也許受到此舉的啟發，艾伯特才剛剛開始。

“We started out shooting for a 500% return on ad spend, which Albert achieved,” Simson says. “Now, we average 1,100%. On some campaigns, we hit 3,000%.”

Overall, Simson says the company spends 25% less on marketing now and sees at least 30% better results. In fact, the results of using Albert were so significant that Simson, ever the serial entrepreneur, started a marketing company that is now an exclusive Albert distributor in Australia and New Zealand.

But this isn’t even the most interesting part.

Albert didn’t just dramatically increase return on ad spend.

The platform found customers Simson didn’t even know she had.

Discovering New Customers

Albert optimizes your ads against a specific KPI set by humans (awareness, customer acquisition, etc.). While the system runs automatically, humans are heavily involved every step of the way. But just letting the AI do its thing can sometimes produce amazing results.

就Redballoon而言，Albert利用機器學習的力量找到了有可能對購買感興趣的全新受眾。

她說：“我在美國和英國發現了前往澳大利亞的人，我什至不知道自己有。”

Turns out, Albert saw something Simson’s human colleagues didn’t: Australian expats were highly motivated to buy the company’s experiential deals, either as gifts for family back home or for themselves. Previously, the team had been advertising to people within the country.

阿爾伯特還有效地向幾十人的小觀眾宣傳了人類團隊沒有時間的目標。

西姆森說：“我們可以以前所未有的方式瞄準微觀審核。”“說，阿德萊德65歲以上的男人喜歡飛行。”

Albert’s ability to advertise at scale makes it cost-effective to find and target全部groups that might be interested in RedBalloon’s offerings.

AI Implementation Isn’t Always Easy

Simson is quick to note that piloting AI like she did isn’t always easy. And it’s not for every company.

“People look at AI like it’s a silver bullet. But you still have to do the work,” she says. RedBalloon spent months piloting Albert before fully investing in the platform.

The company also had lots of data to work with, which was crucial. AI must have data in order to perform. In RedBalloon’s case, the company had at least six months of robust advertising performance data for Albert to work with.

“If you’re not spending enough, it cannot do the work to find the right audiences,” Simson says. She notes that Albert specifically is probably best for consumer brands—and it’s not a fit for startups that haven’t yet acquired customers.

AI like Albert also requires that marketers, executives and entrepreneurs give up some control, which can be tough.

“I get why people would struggle with AI. It’s absolutely about trust. As a founder, I want to control everything, so it’s hard.”

But the rewards are worth it. And, contrary to what you might expect, AI can become a valuable member of the team, rather than a replacement for humans.

西森說：“您的團隊不必害怕他們會失業。”相反，這更像是他們進行升級。在Redballoon，以前負責執行付費廣告活動的人現在監督阿爾伯特並做出戰略決策。艾伯特（Albert）的努力比人類要好得多，使團隊釋放了時間和資源，將時間和資源投入到更有價值的任務中。伟德bv885

In RedBalloon’s case, AI is good for the bottom line和good for people. In fact, the whole experiment with Albert has Simson asking some radical questions.

“The question I now have is: If I gave an open-ended budget to Albert, at what point do I stop growing? What if I just keep increasing the budget based on this level of return? These are unheard of conversations in marketing that I’m now actually having.”