Ads Boomerang
This repo contains 3 separate systems [github]:
Ads Boomerang was an idea for a self-service SaaS platform for small ecommerce stores that would deliver advertising focused on driving more sales. This included a script to be inserted into the client’s store, a dashboard to upload ads, an integration with an ad-inventory API, and reporting.
Technical Aspects
The system used:
- Rails 5
- Postgres and Redis for storage and queues
- Memcached for caching
- payola-payments and Stripe for handling payments
- Beeswax for buying accessing Ad Inventory
What went well
From a technical perspective, most of the bits worked as expected; specifically:
- Integration with Shopify made setup easy
- Integration with Beeswax PaaS provided the ability to buy ads on a variety of ad exchanges
- Dashboard accepted uploads for most standard image formats (300x250, 728x90, 160x600, etc.)
Why didn’t it work?
The main issue is that there was too much support and explanation required versus the target client’s budget:
- most small store owners weren’t very tech-savvy, so had to be explained the benefits of retargeting.
- Store owners needed ads designed.
- some store owners were skeptical of online ads generally: many small sellers didn’t want to be the type of business that advertised.
- Retargeted ads are cheap, but limited to a site’s existing pool of users. This capped the amount that a given client could spend on retargeted ads.
- Non-retargeted ads are totally ineffective without huge amounts of data. Given the amount of fraud/non-viewable ad inventory on most ad-exchanges, buying without extensive data brings zero return.