Case studies
Building a custom platform to reimagine ad placements nationwide

Adapt Media, one of Canada’s largest out-of-home (OOH) advertising networks, runs ad campaigns across gas stations, convenience stores, transit shelters, and government buildings. With over 15,000 ad placements to manage, their team had been relying on Excel spreadsheets to plan and price campaigns, a manual process that made every proposal slow, error-prone, and hard to scale. Agilno partnered with their team to design and build a custom geospatial media planning platform that replaced manual tracking with interactive maps, real-time data, and 1-click proposal generation. The result? Campaign planning time dropped by 300%, errors were reduced by 25%, and the sales team could move faster with cleaner, client-ready output.

Client
Adapt Media
Industry
AdTech / Out-of-Home Media
New Platform
Interactive Media Planning Tool
Duration
1 year
Goal
Modernize how national ad campaigns are planned, sold, and delivered
What we built
A custom-built, browser-based media planning platform that consolidates every critical function into one intuitive interface
Impact
300%
Faster planning and approvals
25%
Reduction in planning errors
50%
Less admin work via role-based permissions
Team

1 Project Manager
1 Senior Product Designer
1 Q/A Engineer
1 Frontend Developer
1 Backend Developer

Services

Product Strategy
UX/UI Design
Web Development
DevOps
System Integration
Data Architecture

Tech

Frontend – React (deployed on EC2, with plan builder, filters, and mapping)
Backend – Nest.js (modular services built on Express and TypeScript)
Database – Amazon RDS (PostgreSQL for plans, census, inventory, pricing, users)
Containers – Docker images stored in Amazon Elastic Container Registry
Orchestration – Kubernetes (namespaced in Datalytica cluster: staging & prod)
Monitoring & Email – Sentry for errors; SendGrid for backend emails

Rebuilding Media Planning from the Ground Up

We helped Adapt Media replace 25 years of spreadsheet-based planning with a centralized, interactive campaign tool → cutting planning time by 300%.

Adapt Media is a Canadian leader in out-of-home (OOH) advertising, running targeted ad campaigns across gas stations, transit shelters, convenience stores, and public buildings. With more than 15,000 ad spaces across 1,000+ markets, their network is national in scope, and highly complex to manage.

But until recently, their teams planned everything using spreadsheets.

Each campaign involved cross-referencing location data, inventory availability, audience targeting, and pricing…manually. Campaigns were vulnerable to human error, and media planners spent hours just assembling the basics.

geospatial media planning platform
The Problem: Outgrowing the spreadsheet mindset

Adapt Media’s legacy system was built around Excel: custom formulas, massive lookup tables, and years of institutional knowledge that only a few team members had mastered. A process that not only slowed down campaigns—it introduced risk, bottlenecks, and burnout. This created operational drag and hidden costs:

  • Siloed Planning Tools: Planners had to cross-reference multiple files to identify ad space near a client’s target location.
  • Disconnected Targeting Data: Audience targeting required manual filtering across disconnected datasets.
  • Manual Budgeting: Budgeting involved recalculating totals every time availability or pricing changed.
  • Outdated Proposals: Proposal generation was done manually, often using outdated data.
  • Inefficient Revisions: Revisions were time-consuming and prone to version-control errors.
Discovery & Strategy

Before jumping into development, we partnered with Adapt to map their workflows, define pain points, and align on business priorities. This included:

  • User persona development for media planners, sales teams, and admins.
  • Current-state workflow mapping to uncover friction and complexity.
  • Impact mapping to identify the highest-value features.
  • Information architecture planning to guide UX decisions.

We also benchmarked against competitor tools to ensure Adapt’s platform could leapfrog ahead, not just catch up.

Delivering a custom-built, browser-based media planning platform that consolidates every critical function into one intuitive interface.
Designed to support both day-to-day planning and long-term scalability.
Geospatial Planning
Media planners can now explore available inventory using an interactive map, selecting ad placements near points of interest using polygon and shape tools.
Live Inventory Data & Costing
Availability and pricing are automatically updated in real time. The platform dynamically calculates campaign costs and ensures proposals reflect the latest data.
Advanced Audience Targeting
Integrated demographic and behavioral datasets allow planners to filter locations by audience segments, region, and campaign goals.
1-Click Proposal Generation
Campaign proposals are auto-generated from real-time data—clean, accurate, and client-ready within minutes.
Role-Based Access
A permissions framework ensures the right team members can access the right media plans and inventory, with a 50% reduction in admin time.
Scalable Architecture
Built to evolve alongside the business, the platform integrates multiple data sources—inventory, census, POI (points of interest), and pricing—into a cohesive system ready for growth.
Client testimonial
We, at Chameleon Digital Media, are so very pleased with the work that Petar and his team has done to date, and we are only in the discovery phase so far! It took me a while to understand the complexity and time needed to be able to unravel the deep breakdown of what was needed to build our APP, and that came at a small cost, which we happily pay, now knowing more about our own project than ever before. They bring psychology, intelligence, and excellence to the table. We are very excited about the next stages, and an APP that will change the world! Well, at least our world anyhow, and that is what matters.
Jamie Thompson
CEO - Adapt Media & Chameleon Digital Media
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