# How Grab Leveraged Performance Marketing Automation to Improve Conversion Rates by 30%

[Grab](https://yomu.fyi/company/grab) · Sc Ng · Mar 22, 2021

**Type:** Problem & solution

## Summary

Grab faced operational bottlenecks managing direct-response Google Ads campaigns across thousands of ad groups due to its hyperlocal marketing across Southeast Asian markets. To eliminate the manual burden of tracking and updating ad creatives, the team built CARA, an in-house automation tool deployed on AWS serverless compute. CARA utilizes standardized file naming conventions to map assets to specific campaigns and connects with Google Ads and YouTube APIs to detect and replace low-performing assets. During an experimental rollout across more than 8,000 active ad groups, CARA replaced nearly 2,000 underperforming creatives. The automated asset replacement workflow produced an 18% to 30% increase in clickthrough and conversion rates.

## Context

Grab's granular Google Ads account structure generated thousands of ad groups to support hyperlocal strategies across Southeast Asia, making manual monitoring and refreshing of creative assets impossible to sustain as business growth outpaced team resources.

## Approach / What changed

Grab developed CARA, an in-house automation tool deployed on AWS serverless compute that leverages Google Ads and YouTube APIs alongside a standardized creative naming convention to automatically scan for and replace low-performing ad creatives with library assets.

## Takeaways

- CARA uses a standardized naming convention incorporating attributes like market, city, service type, and campaign goal to map creative files to specific campaigns and ad groups.
- The tool integrates with Google Ads and YouTube APIs and runs on AWS serverless compute to host and replace assets at scale.
- An experimental rollout across more than 8,000 active ad groups replaced nearly 2,000 underperforming assets and increased clickthrough and conversion rates by 18% to 30%.

**Tags:** [AWS](https://yomu.fyi/topic/aws), [Performance](https://yomu.fyi/topic/performance), [Scalability](https://yomu.fyi/topic/scalability), [Serverless](https://yomu.fyi/topic/serverless)

[Read original post](https://engineering.grab.com/learn-how-grab-leveraged-performance-marketing-automation)