Performing on paid social is hard, especially when your team is stressed by tight deadlines, high expectations and limited resources. At Plug, we turn your product catalog into a high-converting revenue machine, without the usual stress and hassle.

Founded by a team of Smartly.io alumni, we’ve seen that performing on paid social is no easy task, especially regarding the lower-funnel, which is all about the results. At Plug, we enable catalog-based advertisers to unlock their full potential on paid social. Plug automates the tedious task of running lower-funnel performance campaigns on main social platforms by turning your product catalog into a conversion machine – quickly, seamlessly, and with minimal input from your team.

Why now? What’s driving this shift, and why is Plug the solution your brand needs?

The inevitable shift in paid social‍

The paid social landscape is evolving faster than ever, and brands that don’t adapt risk being left behind. Mobile-first video formats, automation and personalisation are dictating the change:

1. Rapid mobile and video-first advertising is here to stay‍

Consumers prefer to learn about products in ad-placement native formats and especially in short-form, mobile-native video formats like Instagram Stories, Reels, and TikTok. However, ad fatigue quickly sets in if creatives aren’t refreshed regularly​.

2. Social platforms automate ad-buying‍

Platforms like Meta automate much of the ad-buying process, from audience targeting to budget allocation. Facebook’s Advantage+ campaigns, for example, reduce the need for manual setup, allowing advertisers to focus more on creative strategy.

3. Personalisation at scale

Consumers expect tailored content, with personalised video ads outperforming static, one-size-fits-all creatives. Yet, creating this level of customisation at scale is overwhelming without the right tools.

These shifts aren’t just passing trends; they’re permanent changes shaping the future of advertising. And they come with clear implications for advertisers. Brands that fail to adapt risk falling behind.

What this means for advertisers like you

For e-commerce, growth and performance leaders from any industry, the implications are clear: creatives are the new targeting requiring you to have creative variety and volume.

1. Creative is the key: No longer do meticulous ad-buying setups carry your campaigns alone. Today, your ad creatives dictate the campaign purpose, audience, and performance. Without fresh ads, your campaigns fall flat by losing engagement, wasting ad spend, and missing key growth opportunities.
2. Ad-placement native content: Video formats often dominate, and your ads need to be designed specifically for the platforms and placements they run on—whether that’s Story, Reels, TikTok, or any other placement. Manually handling this at scale is slow, costly, and inefficient.
3. Personalisation: Personalised ads deliver higher engagement, but scaling personalisation is hard and expensive with traditional methods like UGC. Think about having multiple ads running in parallel for the same product, but each talking to a different target group of yours. 
4. Creative bottlenecks: Many brands are stuck in an endless cycle of revisions and agency bottlenecks, leading to missed opportunities, especially during the peak seasons.

In our next post, we’ll dive deeper into the implications and related challenges. 

Our mission at Plug

At Plug, we believe that every brand, no matter the size, deserves the tools to compete and win on paid social. We’ve seen firsthand how creative bottlenecks can hold businesses back. That’s why we build solutions to automate the heavy lifting, freeing you from the grind of lower-funnel performance marketing. Our approach is simple: transforming your product catalog and existing assets into a powerful growth engine through engaging product-level ads, giving your team more time to focus on strategy and scaling your business.

Ready to leave creative bottlenecks behind? Contact us and see how Plug can turn your product catalog into a conversion engine, saving you time and driving higher returns.