From URL to First Ad in 90 Seconds

This guide walks you through generating your first brand-matched ad with mani, from pasting your URL to having a publishable ad. Total time: 90 seconds for the Brand DNA scan, plus 2-3 minutes for generation and review. You will have your first ad in under 5 minutes.

Step 1: Start the Brand DNA scan (10 seconds)

Go to mani.com/tools/rate-my-brand or sign up at mani.com. You will see a single input field asking for your website URL. Paste your store or business URL. It works with any website: Shopify, WordPress, Squarespace, custom-built, even a single landing page.

Click "Scan" or press Enter. The Brand DNA extraction starts immediately. You will see a progress indicator as each of the six extractors runs: tone, audience, palette, products, keywords, and visual style.

Step 2: Review your Brand DNA (30 seconds)

Within 30-90 seconds, your Brand DNA profile appears. This is what mani learned about your brand from your website. Review each section:

Brand name and tagline: Extracted from your meta tags and H1. If the name is wrong (common for sites with long titles), click to edit.

Tone: Shows your primary and secondary voice registers (e.g., "casual / playful" or "professional / technical"). If the tone feels off, adjust it. Tone directly affects how the AI writes your ad copy.

Audience: Who your brand serves. This should be specific enough to write an ad for. "Software engineers at fast-moving startups" is good. "Everyone" is not. If the audience is too generic, edit it to match your actual ICP.

Color palette: Your primary, secondary, accent, and background colors. These are pulled from your CSS. If the AI picked up the wrong primary color (sometimes it grabs a background instead of the brand color), click the swatch and correct it.

Products: The products or features the AI identified from your site. For e-commerce, these are product names. For SaaS, these are feature names. Remove any that are wrong (the AI sometimes picks up CTA labels) and add any it missed.

The Brand DNA scan is not always perfect on the first pass. But it is 80-90% accurate for most sites, and the 10-20% you correct takes 30 seconds of editing. This one-time investment pays off across every future generation.

Step 3: Generate your first ad (60 seconds)

Once your Brand DNA is confirmed, you will see the generation interface. Here is what to set:

Brief: A 1-2 sentence description of what you are advertising. Examples: "Summer sale on running shoes, 30% off." "New feature launch: team collaboration." "Subscribe and save 20% on monthly coffee delivery." The more specific the brief, the better the output. "Make me an ad" produces generic output. "Summer clearance on our best-selling Trail Runner Pro, now $89 (was $129), for runners who train in all weather" produces excellent output.

Format: Select the ad format: single image (1:1 for feed, 4:5 for Instagram portrait), carousel (5 slides), or story/reel (9:16 vertical). Start with single image for your first ad. You can generate other formats after.

Variation count: How many creative angles to generate. Start with 3. Each variation takes a different creative approach: different hook, different visual composition, different emotional appeal. You are not getting 3 copies of the same ad. You are getting 3 genuinely different creative concepts.

Click "Generate." The AI generates copy (headline, body, CTA) using Claude, grounded in your tone and audience. Then it generates visuals using FairStack, grounded in your palette and visual style. Total generation time: 15-60 seconds depending on format and variation count.

Step 4: Review and approve (60 seconds)

Your 3 variations appear in a swipe interface. For each variation, you see: the visual (image or carousel), the headline, the body copy, and the CTA button text. Swipe through them and make a decision for each:

Approve: This variation is good enough to publish. It goes into your library ready for export. You do not need to love every element. If the overall concept is strong and the brand feels right, approve it. You can edit copy details before publishing.

Reject: This variation is not working. Maybe the visual composition is off, the copy angle does not resonate, or the brand feel is wrong. Reject it and the AI learns from your rejection. Future generations bias away from the rejected pattern.

Save for later: The concept is interesting but not ready to publish. It goes into your saved drafts for future reference or editing.

For your first generation, expect to approve 1-2 out of 3 variations. This approval rate increases as the AI learns your preferences. Experienced users report 50-60% approval rates after 2-3 weeks of regular use.

Step 5: Export and publish (30 seconds)

For each approved ad, you have three export options:

Direct publish: Connect your Meta, TikTok, or LinkedIn account and publish directly from mani. The ad exports in the correct format and resolution for each platform.

Download: Download the image and copy as separate files. Use this if you want to schedule through Buffer, Later, or your existing social media tool.

Copy to clipboard: Copy the headline, body, and CTA text to paste into your ad platform's creative builder.

Your first ad is live. Total time from URL paste to published ad: under 5 minutes. The Brand DNA scan (Step 2) only happens once. Every subsequent generation skips straight to Step 3, taking the total time down to 2-3 minutes per batch of 3 variations.

What to do after your first ad

Your first ad is a proof of concept. Here is the progression that most users follow:

Day 1: Generate 3 variations (you just did this). Publish the best one. Day 2-3: Generate 5 more variations across different formats (try a carousel and a story). Week 1: Run 3-5 approved ads as a test campaign at $20-50/day. Measure CTR and CPA against your existing creative. Week 2: Review performance. Star top performers in mani. Generate a new batch biased toward your winning styles. Week 3+: Enable the daily queue. Mani generates 3-5 fresh ads every morning. Swipe through in 5 minutes. Publish the winners. You now have a creative production pipeline running on autopilot.

The progression from "trying mani for the first time" to "using the daily queue as your primary creative pipeline" typically takes 2-3 weeks. By the end of week 3, most users have generated 30-50 ads, identified their winning creative angles, and established a daily habit of reviewing and publishing from the queue.

Common questions

What if the Brand DNA scan gets my brand wrong? Edit it. The scan is a starting point. Click any field and correct it. Your edits persist permanently and improve every future generation.

What if I do not like any of the generated variations? Reject all three and generate again with a different brief. Try being more specific about what you want. "Summer sale, playful tone, product front-and-center, bright background" produces more targeted results than just "summer sale."

Can I edit the generated ad copy? Yes. Every text field (headline, body, CTA) is editable before export. The visual is also regenerable if you want a different composition.

Does this work for video? Mani generates video concepts (scripts, storyboards, frame-by-frame visual direction). For actual video production, you record the footage using mani's script and storyboard, then edit in CapCut or your preferred video editor.

Is the free tier enough to evaluate? Yes. The free tier gives you 20 generations per month. That is enough to scan your brand, generate 6-7 batches of 3 variations each, and have a clear sense of whether the output quality meets your standard. No credit card required.

What to do next

The quickstart is the entry point. Once your first ad is published, the natural progression is into three workflows that compound on what you just did. The founder's morning queue turns the quickstart into a 15-minute daily routine. Campaign Studio editing covers the polish-before-publish step in more depth. Editing your Brand DNA covers what to do when the initial scan needs correction (most users do this once after their second batch of generations).

If you are evaluating whether to upgrade past the free tier after your first few generations, see pricing. The per-tier limits map to roughly: Solo for solo founders running one brand, Studio for small teams or multi-brand operators, Scale for agencies and high-volume DTCs.