Tooling
Client
Bally's Interactive
Timeframe
Under 2 days
Year
2026
The situation
The marketing team wanted to run interactive video ads on the Liftoff platform. Interactive formats let viewers tap, choose and explore inside the ad itself, and they consistently outperform passive video on engagement.
The only route available was a third-party platform called Playable, whose export manager produced creatives in the format Liftoff requires. The subscription cost around £2,000 per month, and it made an external vendor a permanent dependency for a capability we would need indefinitely.
The decision
Rather than accept the recurring cost, I took the initiative to build the capability myself. I had the two skills the problem needed: a working knowledge of software development, and fluency with AI-assisted coding tools that have collapsed the time it takes to go from idea to working product.
I then designed and built a complete interactive video editor from scratch, using AI-assisted development directed by my own understanding of the architecture, the video formats involved and the Liftoff platform's technical requirements.
What I built
A full-featured editor for creating interactive video ads, including:
Segment cutting and looping, so a single video can be restructured into branching, repeatable sections
Multiple interaction points per video, letting viewers tap through different paths and outcomes
Multi-branch touch interactions, supporting genuinely non-linear ad experiences
Export fully compliant with the Liftoff platform's delivery requirements
The first working version was built in under 2 days.
The result
The £2,000+ per month subscription was eliminated entirely
The marketing department gained a permanent in-house capability: fully interactive video ads, produced end to end on proprietary technology, with no external platform in the workflow
We now deliver interactive video campaigns on Liftoff using the tool, which has been adopted across the wider video team, beyond the motion graphics team where it was built
The work was recognised in a company-wide innovation award in the Builders and Innovators category, announced on the company-wide broadcast
Why this case matters
Most creative teams treat their tooling as a fixed constraint: you work with what you can license. I treated it as part of the design problem. When the constraint is a vendor cost or a capability gap, building the solution in-house is now a realistic option, provided AI-assisted development is directed by someone with enough engineering fundamentals to make sound architectural decisions.
That is the working method I bring to a team. Identify the recurring cost or bottleneck, judge whether proprietary technology can remove it, and deliver the solution quickly enough that the business case is self-evident.
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