Partner Spotlight: Brainlabs' success with Microsoft Advertising

We recently spoke with Nitesh Amin at Brainlabs, a trailblazing agency thriving on innovation, engineering, and data science. Follow along as we explore Brainlabs’ unique people-centered approach, methodology, and technology, and how they've driven remarkable growth and success with Microsoft Advertising.

Meet Nitesh Amin

Hi, I’m Nitesh Amin, Associate Director of Programmatic Media at Brainlabs NAMER. In my current role, I lead programmatic media as a key pillar of omni-channel paid media strategy at one of the PODs while serving as a trusted advisor to my colleagues. Passionate about the ever-evolving digital advertising landscape, I focus on clients from industries like retail, tech, real estate, and gaming.

On a personal note, I love staying up late to watch meteor showers—it’s one of my favorite ways to connect with the night sky.

About Brainlabs

Brainlabs was founded in 2012 by former Googler Daniel Gilbert when he spotted an opportunity to build an agency with engineers, statisticians, and data scientists. From day one, we didn’t just want to copy what we saw in other marketing agencies. Instead, we built a tried and tested approach around the three key pillars:

1. People
2. Methodology
3. Technology

Over the last 12 years, we've supercharged our growth from one to over 1,000 Brainlabbers, acquired and integrated nine agencies, and expanded our international footprint beyond our London HQ. We’re independent, global, and full-service, and our success has been entirely built on delivering high performance for some of the world’s most sophisticated advertisers.

It’s a privilege that brands like Walmart choose us as their partner in media off the back of our high-performance results. For the likes of Estée Lauder and Capital One, we deliver full-service media, and for other clients like our SEO partnership with Microsoft, we deliver channel-specific expertise.

Success with Microsoft Advertising

Microsoft Advertising has been pivotal in our success, particularly through its innovative tools like Audience ads.

In our Back to School campaigns, we leveraged Microsoft Advertising’s advanced capabilities to integrate paid display strategies seamlessly with our search and shopping efforts. This allowed us to deliver highly targeted, non-intrusive impressions, resulting in high store visits in just two months. And by using Audience ads in our Back to School campaign, we’ve expanded our client reach in underutilized markets, achieving significant improvements in impressions (35%), clicks (67%), and CTR (24%).

The campaign drove a projected ROAS of 27.6x, demonstrating how Microsoft Advertising helps us deliver on client objectives while fostering sustained business growth.

The collaboration with Microsoft Advertising has been transformative. Microsoft Advertising not only drives measurable results, but also empowers us to craft campaigns that align with our clients' goals, enabling us to grow and scale impactful strategies across industries.

Tools of the trade

Our team loves Audience ads for the ability to deliver cost-effective, high-quality impressions with exceptional viewability. We were able to amplify major retail clients’ store visits and offline conversions by targeting underutilized designated market areas. Additionally, Multimedia ads stand out for their versatility in e-commerce, letting us repurpose creative messaging to align with varied customer intents, from store location searches to promotions.

Making a difference

One of our top priorities at Brainlabs is to champion transparency and ethical practices. We focus on delivering total customization and bespoke solutions tailored to each client’s unique needs. Through strategic partner pairing, we ensure optimal volume, control, sustainability, and transparency, creating a programmatic approach that drives results while maintaining integrity.

In an era where digital advertising faces increasing scrutiny, we prioritize full transparency in every aspect of our programmatic operations. From clear data sourcing to clean and premium media buying, we ensure that our clients have complete visibility into where their ads are placed, how their budgets are allocated, and the real impact of their campaigns.

We’re committed to ethical data usage, advocating for responsible targeting that respects user privacy without compromising campaign performance. By leveraging privacy-compliant solutions and first-party data strategies, we help our clients reach their audiences in a way that fosters trust and long-term engagement.

Our approach goes beyond compliance—we set the standard for accountability in programmatic advertising. We proactively combat ad fraud, brand safety risks, and opaque supply chains, ensuring that every impression is authentic, viewable, and aligned with our clients’ brand values. By leading with integrity, we’re shaping a future where programmatic advertising isn’t just effective, but also ethical, transparent, and sustainable.

Growing with Generative AI (GAI)

We view GAI as a pivotal tool for driving innovation and enhancing efficiency in our operations. Our tech team of over 40 skilled software engineers has developed Cortex—our end-to-end platform packed with hundreds of features that automate the marketing lifecycle. These features were specifically designed to address real-life challenges our clients and account managers face. Combining these incremental gains across Cortex results in outcomes that set our clients apart from the competition. We refer to this as “The Brainlabs Effect.”

Beyond Cortex, we create custom tech solutions to tackle unique business challenges. By leveraging AI for campaign optimizations, such as dynamically adjusting ad creative and bidding strategies, we ensure campaigns consistently deliver top-tier performance. For example, the ongoing creative adjustments in our major retail client’s Back to School campaign were driven by data-powered insights—a perfect example of how we blend advanced AI tools with human expertise to achieve exceptional results. GAI is also enhancing Cortex in groundbreaking ways that weren’t possible just a few years ago. For instance...

• Our BrainBriefs now automate a large part of the SEO brief-writing research process, significantly reducing the time needed to publish new SEO content.

• Our Audit platform benefits from GAI by providing more actionable insights through interpreting analytical outputs and presenting them in easily digestible formats.

• In Bytesights, GAI analyzes influencer content and style so users can assess the emotional impact of their creatives and make more informed decisions when selecting assets for their campaigns.

Overall, GAI is unlocking exciting possibilities for integrating AI capabilities into Cortex, driving innovation, and enabling us to deliver even more powerful results across the entire agency.

Additionally, our recent partnership with Microsoft on a project to integrate Microsoft Advertising into Cortex allows Microsoft Ads to leverage our platform’s full suite of tools. This collaboration highlights our commitment to enhancing our capabilities and pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.

Looking ahead

At Brainlabs, we’re always focused on pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, especially when it comes to delivering innovative, results-driven strategies for our clients. One of the key areas we’re excited to explore further is expanding the reach and impact of native advertising via Audience ads. While native ads have been incredibly effective in the retail sector, we’re eager to take these solutions into new verticals, such as real estate, finance, and hospitality.

Not an enrolled partner? Learn more and apply to join the Microsoft Advertising Partner Program.