Promo.com grows its PromoAI product sixfold, adds over $1M in new annual recurring revenue with Microsoft Azure

Promo.com, founded in 2012, started as a slideshow company, Slidely, and helped over 200 million people create, discover, and share slideshows and visuals. By 2016, the company evolved and launched Promo.com to disrupt the way small business owners and agencies create videos. "PromoAI is a self-service product, which means we need to convert users through the product itself,” shares Yariv Azatchi, Chief Technology Officer at Promo.com. “Therefore, our product needs to offer an amazing and intuitive experience from the first interaction.”

Scaling from zero to tens of thousands

Building on this goal, Promo.com decided to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into its video creation platform and launch its PromoAI product to empower businesses to automatically generate branded videos. "Unlike many other AI products that are limited to single video generation at a time or focus solely on ideation, we create 30 videos in parallel, each involving a comprehensive process from the overall strategy, writing copy to selecting footage and music. This places a significant load on the system," Azatchi explains. However, Promo.com quickly realized that the existing API it was using couldn't handle the expected traffic, where a single user had to wait five minutes for the generation process to end, and not more than two users were able to use the product simultaneously.

Promo.com quickly sought alternative solutions, ultimately choosing Microsoft Azure. “As we were focused on launching a minimum viable product to test the waters, we needed a pay-as-you-go model, which we found with Azure,” Azatchi remarks. Promo.com also discovered that Azure OpenAI Service was compatible with its existing infrastructure and that became the decisive factor. With the expertise of 2bcloud, a leading Global Microsoft partner, Promo.com not only transitioned smoothly but also optimized their architecture and costs effectively. "The migration process was exceptionally swift. Once we integrated Azure, it only took about a week to start handling real customer requests,". Promo.com developed its own load balancer for AI model endpoints, an application that distributes incoming network traffic across multiple regions and models. 

“Pretty quickly, we had enough scale to launch the product to real users and go to market,” Azatchi adds. “Being able to allow the scale at visitor level and enable people to test the solution before purchasing, was critical for us. With Azure, tens of thousands of videos are now generated each day, and the system remains fast and stable.” 

Saving small business owners weeks of work

With Azure, PromoAI was able to offer fast, stable and reliable performance. "Today, PromoAI essentially takes the business domain which the user provides and generates 30 videos in two minutes. This not only saves the user weeks of work but also empowers them with a ready-to-use marketing plan, boosting their ability to engage customers consistently,” says Azatchi. Users can then edit the videos using a built-in chat editor or a manual fully featured video editing tool. The user can then schedule posts on various social media platforms. “What we're trying to create is a very simple flow where a user doesn't need to have any marketing skills," he mentions. "A small gardening service business owner might not have the time or desire to learn how to prompt the AI. We were able to hide that complexity from the user and give them results first, which is great.”

Better experience, higher retention, more revenue

Azure’s scalability enabled Promo.com to increase its user capacity sixfold, making the platform ready for first-time users. “There are tens of thousands of visitors per month testing our product. With Azure, we have the confidence to let visitors experience the value of our product, because even when we get a spike in traffic, we can support it seamlessly. No crises, no late-night phone calls, Azure just works. As a result, we’ve almost tripled the number of new paying users,” says Azatchi. 

With a faster product, Promo.com can retain more customers. “We see an almost 40% higher retention rate across PromoAI users compared to our classic, manual video editor product. Existing customers also became more engaged, with some creating 10 to 20 times more videos.” 

A rise in users has led to an increase in revenue. “With Azure, we not only quickly validated the product-market fit; we were able to scale PromoAI from zero to $1 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) and our revenue per user grew by 20% in less than five months,” Azatchi highlights.

Partnership that paved the way to success

As a Microsoft partner specializing in startups and offering deep technical expertise, 2bcloud plays a pivotal role in enhancing Promo.com's strategy. "The 2bcloud team serves as our ambassadors within the Microsoft ecosystem. They ensure seamless communication with both us and Microsoft, and are remarkable for their swift response times," Azatchi appreciates. This collaboration is fortified through regular monthly meetings aimed at leveraging technology effectively while optimizing performance and costs. "As CTO, with a broad range of responsibilities, I find the proactive suggestions from the 2bcloud team especially valuable. Their insights help me save time and keep focused on our core objectives," Azatchi notes. “The partnership with Microsoft and 2bcloud remains central to Promo.com’s ongoing plans.” 

As Promo.com continues to refine its products, it plans to offer users more customization options. "We want to expand the type of videos we create," says Azatchi. “We also want to make content management easier through AI curation. And we plan to add more AI-generated media, like voiceovers, and subtitles.” 

Reflecting on its AI journey, Azatchi concludes, "Microsoft’s combination of scale, support, and pay-as-you-go model paved the way to our success and we're just getting started."