Zencastr needed to scale user acquisition globally and produce high volumes of creative for paid campaigns without a massive in-house marketing team.

The Challenge

Zencastr had built a leading browser-based podcasting platform, but faced a familiar scaling problem: they needed to acquire users across multiple international markets simultaneously, with limited internal marketing resources. Traditional creative production — concepting, designing, producing, testing — couldn’t keep pace with the volume of experiments needed to crack new markets.

The cost per acquisition in untested markets was $34 or higher, and the team was producing only a handful of creative variations per month. At that pace, finding winning creative in even one new market would take quarters, not weeks.

The Approach

We deployed our AI Performance Creative pipeline — a system where strategy directs the creative hypotheses and AI handles the production volume.

Creative strategy first. Before generating a single asset, we mapped Zencastr’s audience segments across 5 target markets, identified messaging angles (ease of use, audio quality, remote collaboration), and defined visual treatments for each.

AI-powered production at scale. Using our AI creative workflow, we produced 40+ unique creative variations per sprint — each tied to a specific hypothesis about what would resonate in each market. Static ads, video hooks, carousel formats, and landing page variants were all part of the mix.

Rapid testing and iteration. Every variation was deployed into structured A/B tests. Performance data flowed back into the creative strategy within days, not weeks. Winning patterns were identified and amplified; underperformers were retired and replaced with new hypotheses.

The Results

• $2.59 CAC in a new market that previously cost $34 per acquisition — a 92% reduction
• 40+ creative assets produced per month, up from fewer than 10
• 5 international markets entered simultaneously with localized creative
• 3x improvement in click-through rates across top-performing variants
• Creative-market fit achieved in weeks rather than the typical quarter-long timeline