Welcome to Intelligent Artifice, your weekly dose of insights to help you win with performance marketing in a Generative AI world.
Intelligent Artifice features hard won insights from the front-lines of performance marketing in a Generative AI world - delivered straight into your inbox. For free.
new wave. same playbook.
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Hi [FULL_NAME GOES HERE], In 2013, I started my career in B2C mobile marketing. My first big project? A Bingo game. And I remember thinking: “How many middle-aged people could there really be in America playing bingo on their phones?” That was my actual thought. Two weeks in, I saw the monthly budget that I needed to manage for this Bingo game. $1.75 million Just me. No roadmap. No junior marketers to do grunt work. And I was not ready. I couldn’t wrap my head around how one person could be trusted with that kind of budget. It felt reckless. I felt unqualified(and I'd had a couple years of marketing experience). What if I made a small mistake and blew $500k of the company's money? I mean - surely you'd need 4-5 marketers to handle that kind of budget? As it turned out in the just-exploding world of mobile marketing, you could stay lean and move fast. And here’s the crazy part... We made it work. We tested 15+ mobile ad channels. Found signal. Scaled. And the company? Exited for $170 million(look up Bingo Bash, still around today). All from a game I thought nobody played. That experience taught me something I’ll never forget: When the market’s new, everything feels impossible… until it isn’t. And the people who learn fast, test fast, and move fast? They win. Now here we are. 2025. And it’s happening again. Except this time, it’s generative AI. Same feelings. Same skepticism. Same upside. I see founders and marketers today treating DALL·E and ChatGPT like toys. But they’re not toys. They’re the tools that let us test 10x more creative, angles, and hooks: without a huge team. And the performance gains? They’re just as wild as those early mobile days. I missed the internet boom. I caught the mobile wave. And now: this is the next one. If you’re spending $50k+/month and you’re still moving slow on AI… you’re sitting on the sidelines. Reply with “WAVE” and I’ll show you how we’re helping brands scale creative testing the smart (and weird) way. Later, Shamanth P.S. I know the feeling of not being ready. You don’t need to be. You just need to move. PPS. Some ideas from our world: 🔥 DALL·E 3 still aint' available via API - boo. 💰 Early stage subscription apps: stop wasting money on fancy analytics 🤦♂️ That "winning ad" is killing your scaling potential |
Welcome to Intelligent Artifice, your weekly dose of insights to help you win with performance marketing in a Generative AI world.
Intelligent Artifice features hard won insights from the front-lines of performance marketing in a Generative AI world - delivered straight into your inbox. For free.
Hi [FULL_NAME GOES HERE], ZERO. That was the number I wrote on the whiteboard. A month into my new role as Director of Growth, I stood in front of our five-person company, grabbed a marker… and said: “We need to shut off all ad spend.” Not cut. Not reduce. Zero. Cold turkey. It was one of the most emotionally difficult decisions I’ve ever made. Because let’s be real: I wasn’t just pausing ad spend. I was shutting down my own function. I was saying: “The thing I was hired to do? The thing I’ve...
Hi [FULL_NAME GOES HERE], I hear it ALL. THE. TIME. “We’ve hit our ceiling.” “Our product is too mature.” “We’ve tapped out our audience.” They’ve got six figures in spend, maybe 5-6 figures in DAU. They’re running a handful of ads a month. Performance has plateaued. And they’re wondering if that’s just the ceiling. And every time, I want to reach through my screen and shake these people. Let me tell you why…. I worked on Words With Friends. Not when it was shiny and new. When it was 8 YEARS...
Hi [FULL_NAME GOES HERE], I just watched a team light $100,000 on fire. Not literally. But close enough. Soooo I was auditing this account that was spending in the six figures. They had this BEAUTIFUL creative briefing deck. I mean, this thing was a masterpiece: ✅ Hypotheses laid out like a scientific paper ✅ Cutesy little gifs to showcase every concept ✅ Brand values articulated with surgical precision ✅ Shot sequences scripted better than most Netflix shows It was the kind of document that...