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100k+ Brands

Managed programmatically with zero ops

90s Cycle

From brand approval to live PPC ads

65% CTR Lift

Via real-time dynamic ad injection

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The Scale Bottleneck

In affiliate marketing, the “long tail” is where the profit lies. But managing the long tail is an operational nightmare. Managing 50 brands manually is easy; managing 100,000 is impossible without automation. At VoucherCloud (acquired by Groupon), we hit a wall: creating a single PPC campaign took 3-5 minutes. To scale to 100,000 brands, we would have needed an army of 500+ marketers. We needed a way to decouple revenue growth from headcount.

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Solution: Feed-Driven Autopilot

We built Vouchernaut, a fully autonomous AdTech engine. It treats affiliate data feeds as a source of truth, programmatically generating landing pages, validating voucher codes, and pushing campaigns to Google Ads and Facebook APIs.

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System Architecture

The system operates as a unidirectional data pipeline, transforming raw affiliate feeds into live ad inventory.

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Engineering Spotlight: Dynamic Ad Injection

Standard PPC ads are static. We wanted ads that felt “alive”. We engineered a system to inject real-time inventory data directly into the ad copy. Instead of:
“Save at Nike. Discount Codes Available.”
Our system generated:
“Save 20% at Nike. 14 Verified Codes available today (Dec 15).”
This required a tightly coupled sync between our voucher database and the Google Ads API. 
// Simplified Ad Update Logic
async function updateAdCopy(brandId: string, codes: Voucher[]) {
  const activeCount = codes.filter(c => c.isValid).length;
  const bestDiscount = Math.max(...codes.map(c => c.discountPercent));
  
  const dynamicHeadline = `Save ${bestDiscount}% at ${brandName}`;
  const dynamicDescription = `${activeCount} Verified Codes available today (${formatDate(new Date())}).`;
  
  await googleAds.updateAd({
    adGroupId: brandId,
    headline: dynamicHeadline,
    description: dynamicDescription
  });
}
This dynamic injection resulted in a 65% increase in Click-Through Rate (CTR), significantly lowering our Cost Per Click (CPC) and widening the arbitrage margin.

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Automated Quality Assurance

The biggest risk in automation is scaling errors. To prevent “fake code” pollution, we built a headless browser fleet (Puppeteer) that actually tested codes on retailer checkouts before promoting them.
  • Input: “SAVE20”
  • Process: Headless browser adds item to cart -> applies code -> checks total.
  • Output: Valid/Invalid.
Only validated codes triggered the ad spend pipeline.

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Business Impact

This system allowed a team of one to outcompete enterprise teams with hundreds of staff.
  • Acquisition: The technology and methodology were key drivers in VoucherCloud’s acquisition by Groupon.
  • Efficiency: Reduced campaign creation time from 5 minutes to 10 seconds.
  • Profitability: Ran at 90% profit margins due to near-zero operational overhead.
“We didn’t just automate the work; we automated the decision-making. The system decided what to bid, when to pause, and what copy to run based on real-time profitability.”

Watch the Story

See the automation in action