The Live Ads

Software Product Co-Inventor, Head of UX, Marketing Performance Strategist, Technical Integration

overview

Ted Billups co-invented and led a team of UX and ad-tech designers and developers, managers, marketers, and ad-tech partners to create and maintain The Live Ads software while owner of Billups Design

When

2012-2016

Who

Ted Billups, Sam Karow, Charles Stevenson, Greg Lee

services

Display Ad Campaigns, Dynamic Creative Optimization, Software Invention, Head of UX, Marketing Performance Strategist, Technical Integration. Creative Director on most campaigns.

services

“Ted and the Billups team are a long-time trusted agency partner. Their creative campaigns for advertisers delivered on the most important KPIs, through a combination of Adara’s real-time traveler data and their innovative Live Ads dynamic creative software.”
S. Garner
COO Adara

client

Ted and 3 business partners created a creative optimization advertising software platform to meet market needs.

challenge

Digital marketing campaigns performance was/is driven by media audience and lower funnel / last-click metrics, missing out on the opportunity to optimize using dynamic creative, different algorithms and deeper metrics.

solution

Ted and his business partners created The Live Ads, which specialized in Dynamic Creative Optimization to test and optimize on messaging, photos, graphics, color and behavioral performance. The Live Ads was successfully used for campaigns directly with Harry & David, L.L. Bean, Marriott, Hilton, Hyatt, Adara, IHG, Sears, Kmart, Rosetta Stone, Preferred Hotels, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Peapod and Relativity Media, among others.

The software collected data from the ads through a tag container, which was then run through an algorithm that optimized on behavior over time and inputs from The Live Ads interface. Alongside media and audience optimization, the creative optimization used algorithms based on Multi-Armed Bandit and Split testing. Integrated reporting tools included Google DART, Flashtalking and Omniture.

I'm proud of the creativity and hard work that went into The Live Ads software, and what I learned about human behavior and noble attempts to do good things with marketing. However, I realized I no longer wanted to participate in advertising unless it was creating positive user experiences, which proved near impossible given the scale of the industry.

impact

Notable campaigns that leveraged The Live Ads:

Sears
GE Water Heaters: 260% product sales increase; highest performing campaign of the fiscal year.Black Friday and Holiday campaigns: Reduced CPO from $14 to $3 and 10,000% ROI
“We’ve never seen this level of analytics from a creative agency.”
- D. Bazant, Sears Marketing

Harry & David
Q3-Q4 campaigns: 180% increase AOV, 6,946% ROI
“Billups Design also did an amazing job of New Customer Acquisition. Bringing in this many new customers is a huge win for Harry & David.” B. Whitmer, Director of Online Marketing at Harry & David

Rosetta Stone
3D Holiday campaigns: 8x Interaction, 4.75x CTR (vs average performance)

Screens of The Live Ads

Public marketing site, styleguide and wireframes for a travel-specific white-label instance of The Live Ads.

What is The Live Ads

Sample of campaigns that run using The Live Ads

Contact Ted Billups