For years I ran a successful digital marketing agency. One of our favourite clients was a premium matcha tea online store. My team and I loved working with them - not just because of the product, but because they created incredible content. All of their photos and videos were artwork.
The challenge that led to everything
Even though the content was beautiful, our advertising results stagnated:
- ROAS: moving around 8
- Average CPA: HUF 2.800
- My team and I could look at the campaigns 4-5 times a week
- 10-15 new creative variations tested weekly
We were frustrated. We knew we could do better, but we simply didn't have the time to optimise every campaign as often as we would have liked.
At that time, Suhi and I had been developing Infinite∞Ad for a while, but we were only using it for traffic shaping, without AI. One day we were talking, "What if we try it in e-commerce?"
And then came the realisation: that's when AI models were exploding. Together, we saw the opportunity - we needed to build in content creation, expiring action detection, and critically, we needed to automate meta policy checking. We knew we could create something special.
The test that changed our lives
We decided to test our AI-enhanced system on the matcha tea online store. This was the first time we used it for e-commerce campaigns, and with freshly integrated AI models. We ran our manual campaigns in parallel and let the AI try its hand.
I kept pestering Suhi by sending him screenshots of the Meta results. "Look at this ROAS!" "Is this really the CPA?" I refused to believe the results:
Our results (manual treatment):
ROAS: 8
Average CPA: HUF 2.800
Infinite∞Ad AI results:
ROAS: 10-12 (25-50% improvement!)
Average CPA: 1.200 HUF (57% decrease!)
What was the secret?
1. The videos finally worked
In the case of matcha, it turns out that videos are the winners - but not by any means. The AI figured something out that I didn't: each video has 5 different ads, with different text and CTAs. The same beautiful matcha making video spoke to the audience in 5 different ways.
2. Simultaneous treatment of audiences
We used the Advantage+ audience, cold targeting, matcha and coffee loving segments, customer lookalike and retarget. But here's where the real power of AI came in: it launched every post instantly across all audiences, and monitored which performed better where.
We would have been unable to do this manually. When you have 20 posts x 5 ad variations x 5 audiences = 500 combinations running in parallel and optimized every 15 minutes... well, our team couldn't have kept track of that.
3. Speed is everything
While we could look at campaigns 4-5 times a week, the AI optimised every 15 minutes. That's 96 optimizations a day! It immediately stopped what was not working and reallocated the budget to winning combinations.
It was like 100 campaign managers working non-stop, but never getting tired and never making mistakes.
After our history of traffic diversion, this was the real breakthrough. Finally we could not only control traffic, but also convert it in a meaningful way.
The difficult decision
Based on this experience, as well as data and results from other online stores and customers, I called the whole team together one day. The numbers were clear. Whatever we were doing, we couldn't come close to the AI results.
We had two choices:
- Continue the agency and use the software as a competitive advantage
- We close the agency and put all our energy into developing the software
The decision was painful because of the release of so many clients close to our hearts, but the team unanimously opted for the second option. If our software is so much better than ours, imagine how much it can help others!
What did we learn from this?
1. Ego is the greatest enemy
I admit, it hurt all of us at first. We spent years perfecting our skills only to be outdone by a programme. But we had to realise: it's not about who does it, it's about what's best for our clients.
2. Human creativity + AI speed = winning combo
The beautiful content of the matcha online store continues to be made by people. But how do you turn them into 500 duplicate ad variations with optimal targeting? That's the job of AI.
The biggest breakthrough was when we incorporated AI models to not only drive traffic, but also automate content creation, expiring action detection and meta policy monitoring.
3. Sometimes the greatest success is closing a door
Closing the agency was a difficult but necessary decision. Today Infinite∞Ad is helping more and more online stores achieve results they could only dream of before.
Epilogue
The matcha tea online store is still using Infinite∞Ad today, they are running at a stable 10+ ROAS. And what? We no longer optimise campaigns at 2am. Instead, we're developing a system with Suhi and the team that does it all for us - and for you.
This story is not about AI taking our jobs. It's about it freeing us to do what we're really good at: creating, strategising and helping others become more successful.
Dávid Lencsés Founder of Infinite∞Ad (and former agency owner, who was defeated by his team and their own software)
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