About Board.ad
The story behind the pixels
I'm not going to pretend this started with some grand vision to "revolutionize advertising."
It started with me staring at a blank Canva template at 2 AM, trying to make an ad for something I'd built, and realizing I'd rather debug CSS for 6 hours than pick fonts for 6 minutes.
The problem that wouldn't go away
Every time I launched a project, the same cycle repeated:
- Build something cool
- Realize people need to know it exists
- Open Canva with good intentions
- Spend 3 hours making something that looks... fine
- Feel embarrassed posting it
- Wonder why my conversion rates suck
I tried hiring freelancers. $200 later, I'd get something generic that could be advertising literally any SaaS. I looked into agencies. $5k/month to maybe understand my brand after 47 revision rounds.
There had to be a better way.
The lightbulb moment
I was procrastinating on creating ads (again) when I realized something obvious: my website already contains my brand.
The colors I use, the fonts I picked, the way I write, my logo - it's all right there. What if AI could just extract all that and create ads that actually match my brand?
Not generic AI templates that scream "robot made this." Actually good ads that understand MY specific brand identity.
Building it (the honest version)
The first version took me 2 weeks and was basically held together with duct tape and hope. The brand extraction worked about 60% of the time, and the ads looked... okay.
But "okay" was already better than my Canva disasters.
The hard part wasn't the AI (thank you, OpenAI API). It was teaching the system to understand brands:
- How do you identify actual brand colors vs random CSS colors?
- What makes a logo vs just another image on the page?
- How do you capture "brand voice" from homepage copy?
- Why do some websites structure their CSS like they're actively trying to confuse machines?
Turns out, parsing brand identity from real websites is way messier than I expected.
What we're building
Board.ad is for everyone who's ever opened a design tool and immediately felt overwhelmed. Developers who can build complex systems but can't pick complementary colors. Founders who know their product inside and out but struggle to communicate it visually.
We're not trying to replace professional designers or creative agencies. We're solving the specific problem of "I need an ad that doesn't suck, and I need it today."
The mission (without the corporate BS)
- Make professional-looking ads accessible to people who aren't designers.
- Help founders spend time building their products instead of wrestling with Canva.
- Save people from paying $200 for a Facebook ad that looks like it was made in 2015.
What's next
Right now, we're focused on making the brand extraction even smarter and the output even better. Every day, we're learning from how people use the tool and what they need.
The goal isn't to become the biggest advertising platform in the world. It's to solve this one specific problem really, really well.
Why "Board.ad"?
Honestly? I needed a domain name, board.ad was available, and it kind of made sense for an advertising tool. Sometimes the best explanations are the simple ones.