Carsales AutoAds (2018): a personalised TV ad for every used-car listing

In early 2018, carsales.com.au — Australia's largest online classifieds for second-hand cars — faced an imbalance it could not outspend. New-car manufacturers were posting record sales and pouring money into glossy TV advertising (AU$756.4M in 2017 alone), while private sellers laboured over listings that could not compete. CHE Proximity's answer, AutoAds, flipped the media model: instead of merely advertising to sellers, the brand gave every private seller their own expensive-feeling car commercial, generated automatically and free.

The system combined filmed material with listing data. Comedy director Tony Rogers and actor Kai Smythe filmed hundreds of scenes with thousands of voiceover lines, and a cloud-based generator built on AWS Step Functions and Lambda stitched each seller's name, car type, price and odometer into five bespoke 40-second spots — Tough, City, Adventure, Family and Luxury — each with original music. Sellers got their ads by email after listing, picked favourites to post on social media, and carsales put a selection on national TV; with over 1.2 trillion possible combinations, no two ads were alike.

The scale became the result: more than 435,215 AutoAds were generated in the first week, over 5,000 more every day, and the campaign reached 16.8 million of Australia's roughly 24 million people through earned PR and paid TV. Juries rewarded the inversion — the Caples Awards in London, MADC's Idea of the Year in Melbourne, and at ADFEST 2019 the Direct Grande Lotus plus two Gold Lotuses.