As our platform keeps growing, we started discussing with Facebook about future potential trademark issues. They highlighted the similarities of our brand names (Instaon & their subsidiary’s Instagram), which are operating in the same industry. We acknowledged & decided to change our brand name to avoid future conflicts of interests & keep a good relationship. Moreover, we felt it was the right time for a rebranding in order to be more in line with our new product offerings & vision.
Early Days
Beginning of 2019, we had our first MVP publicly available. A tool that automated the majority of the tasks to create high-performing search campaigns on Google Ads (keywords research, campaign setup, etc). We started helping small companies & got initial traction in emerging markets. While talking to our users & monitoring the online advertising landscape, we rapidly understood the need to expand our product offerin.
Landscape
Online advertising is an ever-evolving & complex market. Privacy-related regulations, browser updates, unlimited possibilities & new rising channels (ex. TikTok) make it hard for any entrepreneur to stay up-to-date & master their online advertising. To cope with this stress, they seek help from local agencies or use online tools to help them. We strongly believe that today’s solutions are not optimal for the majority of SMBs for 3 main reasons:
- Advertising is not meant for everyone, but when the maths work, it delivers game-changing results. To see if maths are working, there is a need for complex campaign setups and lots of A/B testing (cross-platforms & within individual platforms). Outsourcing it to local agencies & freelancers might result in high upfront costs & management fees. These costs will eat the majority of your returns & make you abandon without having tested efficiently.
- Existing tools focus mainly on big savvy advertisers & agencies. They focus on optimisation features only, insinuating that the platforms’ AI are not working efficiently. Campaign setup & cross-channel exploration are often left behind, but are crucial for online advertising success.
- All current solutions are slow (time-to-market), complex & not collaborative enough in this era of productivity.
Shown
We understand the needs of entrepreneurs, when it comes to online advertising. We also believe we can build a way better solution than today’s alternatives. Shown’s product vision is to build an all-in-one & intuitive ad platform, which will allow anyone to master their online advertising in a more (cost-) effective way.
