What We Learned From Creating a $100K Ad for a Best-Selling Baby Monitor Brand
Hey, if you’re reading this, chances are you’re deep in the trenches running paid ads, constantly looking for ways to scale without blowing up your CAC. I recently broke down how we helped Nanit, a VC-backed baby monitor brand, turn a UGC ad into a money-printing machine. The insights here might just help you do the same.
Client Overview
Nanit, a best-selling baby monitor startup, approached us just before raising their Series C. Their challenge? They needed high-performing ads that could scale profitably, ensuring they could maximize growth while keeping acquisition costs in check. A tall order for most, but exactly the type of challenge we thrive on at Genesist Labs.
Our Approach
To meet this ambitious goal, we went all in:
Storyboarding & Concepting: We crafted multiple ad concepts designed to resonate with new parents, leveraging emotional storytelling and product benefits.
Creator & Talent Sourcing: We lined up a network of vetted creators, ensuring we had the right on-camera talent for authentic UGC (user-generated content).
Production Excellence: We sent our film crew to NYC to capture high-quality footage, ensuring we had all the assets needed to execute a flawless final product.
The Results
The campaign was a massive success: ✅ We created a UGC asset that stayed active in Nanit’s ad account for months. ✅ The ad spent over $100K profitably. ✅ We cut their CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) by over 60%.
While this was a clear win, we also walked away with some key takeaways that continue to shape how we approach high-growth brands.
Our winning UGC ad created for Nanit
Key Lessons Learned
1. Creative Execution is Only as Strong as Your Processes & SOPs
It’s nearly impossible to produce consistently high-performing ad creative if you don’t have a repeatable process. For us, this means:
Building a network of in-house talent & trusted creators.
Working with vetted professionals who get it right the first time.
Streamlining post-production so edits happen at lightning speed.
The faster we get creative into ad accounts, the faster we can optimize and scale spend. This is the difference between winning and burning cash.
2. Sweat the Small Stuff
Great ad creative doesn’t happen by accident—it happens by obsessing over details. For Nanit, this meant:
Ensuring the right messaging and hooks were front-loaded.
Making sure every shot felt natural, not overly produced.
Testing multiple variations of voiceovers, captions, and CTA placements.
The small optimizations add up to big wins in performance.
3. Pace Matters
When scaling paid media aggressively, your creative velocity needs to match your spend. If you’re not producing fresh creative fast enough, ad fatigue will destroy your ROI. We built out a cadence of testing and iteration, ensuring that new assets were lined up before existing ones wore out.
We relied on some key execution tools to ensure this happened smoothly.
Creative OS - a game changer for quickly testing new angles to scale into with video content.
GetAds - when we needed variations of ads we created done quickly, we turned to GetAds to facilitate the execution the right way the first time.
Creative Reporting - Our automated creative reporting imported daily campaign data from Meta where we then used our custom ad naming conventions to quickly analyze what aspect of the ad unit was working or not. This allowed our team to iterate fast and scale focusing in on the key parameters that turned a good ad into a great one. Stay tuned for our automated creative reporting template that we will soon be releasing to the public.
4. UGC Done Right Can Print Money
One of the biggest unlocks in this campaign was nailing UGC storytelling. Too often, brands think of UGC as casual, off-the-cuff content. In reality, the best UGC ads feel native yet structured. They tell a compelling story, highlight clear product benefits, and drive conversions. Our high-production-value UGC approach turned into an asset that kept scaling month after month.
One unconventional tool we used to hone our storytelling skills was the Storyteller tactics deck from PipDecks. This creative system has been invaluable in helping us create unique mini stories in our work that has translated to wins for our clients.
Final Thoughts
This project reinforced what we already knew: when you combine strong creative strategy, an airtight production process, and a commitment to testing and iteration, the results speak for themselves.
Want to see what we can do for your brand? Let’s talk.
