From Static to Dynamic: How Better Links Create Smarter Ads

The Guest

Scott Cate is an internet innovator with more than three decades of experience from the old days of shipping floppy disks through to today’s cutting-edge, cloud solutions. He’s served in key engineering roles at industry giants like Microsoft and Amazon. His work in the space led Scott to focus on links, and create his company, 301.pro, which delivers a rules-based system that turns basic URLs into intelligent, adaptable tools for modern campaigns.

Everyone is Optimizing Ads, Why Not Links?

In an industry obsessed with optimizing creative, copy, and targeting, one critical piece of the ad performance puzzle is hiding in plain sight: the link.

Scott is on a mission to modernize one of the web’s oldest elements—the hardcoded hyperlink—and turn it into a dynamic, rules-driven performance engine for marketers. And for large-scale advertisers, the payoff is significant.

“If a thousand people click a link and they all end up at the same page, that’s a mistake,” says Scott. “You’re not the same person at 8 a.m. that you are at 11 p.m. Why are you showing the same thing?”

From Static URLs to Smart Links

The core of Scott’s system is a rules engine that replaces static URLs with intelligent redirects based on real-time context—like location, time of day, weather, and device—without requiring any personal data.

Imagine promoting the same candle to a buyer snowed in on the East Coast at breakfast versus someone scrolling TikTok at midnight in Los Angeles. With Scott’s rules-based smartlinks, the same product can automatically generate hundreds of unique variations tailored to the moment a user is shown the ad.

“We use AI to create about 900 versions of a single product,” explains Scott. “Then we serve them up dynamically based on who’s clicking and when. It’s still one campaign—but every experience is context-aware.”

Personalization Without the Creep Factor

One of the most compelling advantages of rules-based links? They deliver contextual relevance without behavioral tracking.

“Everything we do is anonymous,” says Scott. “You don’t need to know who the user is. You just need to understand where and when they are—and respond accordingly.”

This approach not only sidesteps rising privacy concerns but also enables advertisers to scale personalization without building complex identity graphs or violating user trust.

Real-Time Optimization, Real Results

Brands working with rules-based links see major performance gains. In text message campaigns, for example, Scott reports 8x higher click-through rates simply by changing the image preview dynamically based on user context.

“The same text message goes out to 10,000 people, but the image preview adapts per recipient. One sees a beach, another sees snowshoes. That’s the power of real-time relevance.”

And unlike bloated personalization strategies that require massive data wrangling, this system is designed to work with the tools marketers already use—Google Analytics, CRMs, data lakes—through lightweight enrichment and webhook integrations.

The Post-Click Blind Spot

Scott is quick to remind marketers that performance doesn’t end at the click. He emphasizes the need to optimize the post-click experience with the same rigor applied to media spend.

“Just because someone clicked doesn’t mean the link worked,” he says. “You need to measure what happened after—did it connect, did it convert, did it matter?”

Scott advocates for adding automatic click data enrichment, and appending valuable metadata (like local time, device, referrer) to URLs so marketers can see what’s actually driving outcomes.

The Takeaway: Ask “What Time Is It?”

Scott leaves marketers with a deceptively simple challenge that unlocks smarter decisions across campaigns:

“What time is it for your customer?”

Whether it’s light mode vs. dark mode, lunch deals vs. dinner promos, or surfboards vs. snow boots, time is one of the most overlooked levers in ad performance.

“Your website is 24/7, but your users aren’t. If you’re showing the same thing to everyone, all the time—you’re leaving money on the table.”

The Links

Scott on LinkedIn
301.pro

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