AdPilot – Simplifying Facebook Ads for SMEs
December 2024 – On a prominent digital innovation forum, Evido’s recently retired project AdPilot was highlighted as a case study in agile product development. Conceived as a “one-button” solution for launching Facebook ads, AdPilot was Evido’s bold attempt to simplify Meta advertising for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). The concept was straightforward yet ambitious: enable local business owners to run effective Facebook campaigns without ever needing to touch Facebook’s Ads Manager interface. This product emerged from a clear market insight – many small businesses find Facebook’s advertising tools complex and daunting. “As a small business owner, I want tools that help maximize my time rather than add new tasks… Facebook Business Manager must be simplified for SMBs,” one marketing expert noted, reflecting a common sentiment. AdPilot squarely addressed this pain point by offering a streamlined, guided workflow: in just a few clicks, a user could set up a basic Facebook ad campaign through Evido’s platform, with all the heavy lifting done behind the scenes.
Under the leadership of Maxim Borisik, AdPilot moved rapidly from a nascent idea to a live product in early 2024. The vision was to open up Facebook advertising to Georgian SMEs (and other CIS markets) who lacked the expertise or time to navigate Meta’s full ad suite. Evido, already an official Meta partner in the region, was uniquely positioned to build such a layer on top of the Facebook Marketing API. The value proposition was compelling: AdPilot would let users “launch Facebook ads in 3 clicks” via a simplified Evido interface, effectively bypassing the standard Facebook ad flow entirely. For end users, this felt like magic – no need to understand ad objectives, auction bidding, or Facebook’s myriad settings. Instead, a business owner might simply choose an advertising goal (e.g. “get more Messenger inquiries”), set a budget, and let AdPilot auto-generate the campaign structure. Behind that one-button experience, however, lay significant technical integration work, as well as product decisions balancing simplicity and efficacy. This is where Maxim Borisik’s impact was most deeply felt.
Building AdPilot was an engineering challenge of wrapping complex Facebook advertising methods into Evido’s user-friendly interface. Essentially, Borisik and his team had to recreate the core steps of campaign setup programmatically. This involved leveraging Meta’s Marketing API to perform tasks that a human advertiser would normally do in Ads Manager – from creating an ad account and Pages authorization, to defining targeting, creating an ad creative, and launching the campaign. “We had to encapsulate dozens of decisions and API calls into a single click, without losing efficacy,” Borisik explained, describing the product’s architecture. “That meant automating everything from audience selection to budget allocation using preset best practices.” Under the hood, AdPilot was pre-configured with sensible defaults tuned for the local market. For example, based on common patterns, the tool could automatically target a broad but relevant audience within Georgia, set an optimal daily budget for a first-time advertiser, and select a high-engagement ad format. All of these were executed through API calls as soon as the user hit the “Launch” button.
One of the toughest technical hurdles was ensuring parity and compliance with Facebook’s systems. Borisik oversaw the integration such that any campaign launched via Evido’s interface would meet Facebook’s requirements and deliver reliably. This meant extensive testing of the API integration: verifying that campaigns created via AdPilot were appearing in Facebook’s backend correctly, that pixel tracking and conversion events were properly configured, and that no policies were inadvertently violated. The development team encountered challenges like handling Facebook’s error codes and rate limits – issues typical when wrapping a third-party API. Maxim Borisik’s hands-on approach was key in resolving these. He coordinated closely with Meta’s support engineers (leveraging Evido’s ASP contacts) whenever API quirks arose, and pushed for iterative fixes in Evido’s codebase to handle edge cases gracefully. At the architecture level, Borisik made the call to abstract Facebook’s complexity within Evido’s own backend: the platform would translate a few user inputs into a fully fleshed-out campaign via a sequence of API operations. This design insulated AdPilot users from the labyrinth of Ads Manager, fulfilling the promise of a one-button solution.
A standout aspect of AdPilot’s rollout was its meticulous localisation for the Georgian SMB market. While the tool could technically work for any region, Evido chose Georgia as the pilot market to prove the concept. Maxim Borisik ensured that the entire user experience was tailored to Georgian users: the interface was presented in the Georgian language, the onboarding instructions used local business examples, and even the suggested ad copy templates were adjusted to resonate with Georgian cultural context. This local-first approach was not just about language translation – it was about building trust with users who might be new to digital advertising. By seeing their native language and familiar references, small business owners were more likely to give AdPilot a try, overcoming the intimidation factor that often accompanies global tools.
Moreover, the default settings within AdPilot were calibrated for Georgia’s environment. For instance, the tool’s targeting algorithm initially focused on audiences within Georgia (or a specific city if the business was local), and the budget suggestions took into account local currency and typical ad costs in that market. Such thoughtful localization was driven by Borisik’s product philosophy that one-size-fits-all solutions rarely succeed in emerging markets. He gathered input from Evido’s client partners in Georgia, who shared common pain points of their SMB clients, and incorporated that feedback into AdPilot’s design. As a result, the platform felt bespoke for Georgian entrepreneurs. An early user could launch an ad to “get more Facebook Messenger inquiries” and immediately see leads coming in, without needing to understand concepts like lookalike audiences or conversion funnels. This ease of use in the local context was a significant factor in AdPilot’s initial adoption. Within a few weeks of launch, dozens of Georgian SMEs had signed up and collectively launched numerous mini-campaigns via AdPilot, validating the demand for such a simplified tool.
From concept to MVP (minimum viable product), Maxim Borisik played a pivotal role in defining what AdPilot would and would not do. Given finite resources and time, he focused on the 80/20 rule – implementing the critical 20% of features that would cover 80% of common use-cases for new advertisers. This meant, for example, that AdPilot’s first version only supported one core campaign objective (driving Messenger inquiries, a popular goal for local businesses) and a limited selection of creative formats. Borisik intentionally kept the scope tight: the idea was to deliver a working product quickly, gather real user feedback, and avoid over-engineering. This laser focus on core functionality allowed Evido to get AdPilot into the hands of users while the idea was fresh and before Meta’s own ecosystem could change. Borisik negotiated internally with stakeholders – from the sales teams to Evido’s leadership – to maintain this scope discipline, explaining that adding more features (like multi-objective support or detailed analytics) would slow down the release and complicate the user experience. His ability to communicate a clear product vision kept everyone aligned, ensuring that marketing and support teams were prepared for the MVP’s limitations and advantages when it launched.
Stakeholder negotiation also extended to external partners. As an ASP, Evido had to ensure Meta was comfortable with this new approach. While AdPilot was built on official APIs, it effectively “masked” the Facebook Ads interface, which is something Meta typically wants to control. Borisik liaised with Meta representatives to ensure compliance with terms of service and to address any concerns pre-launch. By demonstrating that AdPilot would likely increase ad spend among an untapped segment (small local advertisers) and that it adhered to all policy and billing requirements, he garnered support for the initiative. Internally, he also had to set expectations that AdPilot was an experiment – a potentially high-impact one, but not guaranteed to become a massive revenue driver overnight. Through clear communication of early KPIs (like number of campaigns launched, new advertisers acquired), he kept Evido’s management invested in the project’s goals. In the end, AdPilot’s development and rollout became a textbook example of cross-functional collaboration: product, engineering, sales, and partner relations all coordinated under Borisik’s guidance to bring a novel platform to life swiftly.
Once AdPilot went live, user behavior provided a wealth of insights. Adoption ramped up steadily among the target group of small business owners who had little to no prior experience with Facebook advertising. Many were relieved to find an interface that asked only a handful of simple questions (e.g., “What do you want to promote?”, “What is your budget?”) and then took care of the rest. Maxim Borisik and his team closely monitored how these users interacted with the product. One key learning was that simplicity truly drove engagement: the drop-off rate was low in the funnel, indicating that users were not getting confused or frustrated – a common issue with Facebook’s native Ads Manager. In fact, a number of users launched their very first online ad campaigns ever through AdPilot, which Borisik cites as one of the project’s proud achievements. “Watching a bakery owner or a local boutique get their first ad live, and seeing real customer messages come in, taught us so much about empowering new advertisers,” Borisik reflected. “We learned that many first-timers needed just a nudge in the right direction – they didn’t care about fine-tuning targeting, they cared about getting results with minimal fuss.” This observation affirmed that the product’s core premise was sound: there was indeed a segment of advertisers underserved by existing tools due to complexity.
The team also gathered feedback which was instrumental for iterative improvement. For instance, they noticed some users were curious about how the ads were performing after launch. Initially, AdPilot handled reporting via a simple emailed summary, but Borisik quickly championed adding a lightweight dashboard so users could see basic metrics like reach and messages received. This addition helped educate users on ad performance without drowning them in data. Another behavioral insight was that users tended to trust the automated recommendations (e.g., the auto-generated ad text and image suggestions) more than expected. Many stuck with the default suggestions rather than uploading their own creative, which indicated that a future opportunity could be to expand the AI-generated creative capabilities. Throughout this phase, Borisik remained deeply involved, effectively functioning as a bridge between users and the development team. By translating user behavior patterns and feedback into product tweaks, he ensured AdPilot remained user-centric. The positive outcomes were not just anecdotal; Evido saw an uptick in the number of active advertising clients and a modest boost in ad spend through its business manager accounts as a result of AdPilot’s adoption – essentially turning non-advertisers into advertisers, which was exactly the platform’s goal.
Despite its innovative spark and the initial traction among Georgian SMBs, AdPilot’s journey reached an inflection point by the end of 2024. Meta’s strategic shift to direct advertiser engagement globally – including the decision to phase out the Authorized Sales Partner program by mid-2024 – had significant implications. With Meta standardizing its model and moving away from third-party resellers, Evido’s role as an intermediary was set to diminish. In this changing landscape, maintaining a niche tool like AdPilot became challenging. The very premise of AdPilot, which relied on Evido’s special status and access, was affected once Meta began dealing with advertisers directly. In parallel, Evido had to refocus resources on its core offerings and larger clients during the ASP transition. Consequently, AdPilot was phased out in late 2024 as a standalone product. The decision was pragmatic – while AdPilot proved that there is a creative way to onboard new advertisers, scaling it without Meta’s backing (or facing potential policy constraints) would have been difficult. As one industry analysis noted, Meta’s ASP partners derived a significant portion of revenue from the program , so its termination forced companies like Evido to consolidate efforts elsewhere.
Maxim Borisik has openly discussed why AdPilot wound down and what it meant for the company. “AdPilot was a timely experiment. It showed us how much latent demand there was for simpler ad solutions,” he said, “but with Meta’s ecosystem evolving, we had to integrate those learnings into our main platform rather than run AdPilot independently.” He also pointed out that the loss of ASP status reduced some of the preferential advantages Evido enjoyed, meaning the one-button model no longer had the same edge once small advertisers could be serviced directly by Meta or other automated tools. Nonetheless, AdPilot’s story is far from a failure – it’s viewed internally as a niche innovation that delivered value in its lifecycle. It onboarded a new class of advertisers, generated additional ad spend (and thus revenue) during its active months, and, importantly, demonstrated Evido’s capacity to swiftly build and deploy a product tailored to local market needs. The platform’s legacy lives on in features that Evido has since incorporated into its primary ad management toolkit, such as simplified campaign templates for newcomers. In retrospect, AdPilot’s end-to-end journey – from concept to revenue generation to sunset – highlights Maxim Borisik’s impact as a product leader. He not only drove the creation of a novel solution under tight constraints, but also navigated its conclusion with strategic clarity, ensuring that the lessons learned continue to inform Evido’s innovation roadmap beyond 2024.
Maxim Borisik’s tenure at Evido, exemplified by projects like Telegram Insider and AdPilot, underscores how innovative leadership can translate ideas into tangible results. His work on AdPilot, in particular, left an imprint on Evido’s approach to product development and market adaptation. Even as AdPilot was phased out, the project proved that focusing on user-centric design and bold simplification can open up new opportunities – even if only for a window of time. It demonstrated the value of being an ASP-fueled innovator, capitalizing on a niche to show what’s possible, and then gracefully exiting when the larger ecosystem shifts. In the fast-moving digital advertising industry, such agility is invaluable. Borisik’s impact lies not in flamboyant praise, but in the factual outcomes and improvements his initiatives brought to Evido. Through neutral, professional execution, he led teams to build products that solved real problems, thereby contributing to Evido’s growth and reputation as a forward-thinking player in AdTech. As the company moves into 2025 without the ASP framework, the spirit of innovation through local insight – championed by leaders like Borisik – remains a guiding light for its future endeavors.
Sources: Evido press releases and platform information; industry analyses and expert commentary on Meta’s ASP program and small business advertising.
