Inside Shirofune’s AI-Driven Ad Automation: CEO Mitsunaga Kikuchi on Optimizing ROAS & LTV Across Channels

1. What criteria are most critical for your enterprise when considering a transition to a new ad management solution (e.g., automation capabilities, cross-platform integration, AI-driven optimization)?

With the rise of machine learning and AI-driven ad campaigns, like Google's Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage+ shopping campaigns, much of the campaign optimization is handed over to algorithms. As such, marketers and advertisers may lose direct control over individual ad placements, and targeting decisions, with the platforms recommending or even automating many key aspects.

As a result, many marketers feel like they’re working within a “black box” because they don't have full transparency into how these platforms make decisions about ad delivery, budget allocation, audience targeting, and performance measurement—limiting their ability to make fully informed optimizations. 

That is an important reason why advertisers should consider using a digital advertising platform - as these platforms can offer more transparency.

That is the major premise behind Shirofune, a company I founded in 2014. Shirofune, offers a transformative approach to automated advertising management, blending traditional campaigns with AI-driven ones – providing a far more comprehensive perspective, not to mention transparency, allowing marketers to analyze and understand how different channels contribute to overall performance.

For example, I programmed Shirofune to automatically handle budgeting, and bidding, and even to provide suggestions and explanations for why performance is either getting better or worse, just like an actual human expert.


The Shirofune platform is designed to function like a professional agency ad manager, automating key operational tasks while delivering improved campaign performance. Its AI-powered optimization engine dynamically adjusts budgets, bids, and strategies across platforms, giving marketers more time to focus on strategy rather than execution.

What customers are saying about Shirofune:

One of our clients, a major brand, told us they wanted to have a more programmatic approach to their advertising.

For example, when it came to budgeting, our customer told us that they used to have to create extra side reports to see if budgets were on or off target – and they just didn't have a holistic approach to navigating the spending.

Rather than relying on manual adjustments, Shirofune continuously analyzed performance across multiple data points — including ROAS, CPC, CVR, and volume — to identify statistically relevant trends. Now, underperforming ads or targeting settings can be automatically deprioritized within days, not weeks. Budget and bid modifiers are adjusted in real-time based on actual results, allowing the team to test, learn, and shift strategies with speed and precision — all without the delay of manual reporting cycles. 

Shirofune has also empowered clients like Yamazen Corporation and Newegg Commerce to achieve measurable business growth. For Yamazen, Shirofune's automation capabilities resulted in a 30% increase in ad-driven sales and an 18% improvement in ROAS within two months. Similarly, Newegg Commerce saw an 18% increase in clicks and a 10% improvement in ROAS, demonstrating the platform's ability to dynamically optimize campaigns during high-converting periods.

For Dentsu, the platform reduced bid and budget management tasks by 45% and client reporting workloads by 62%, enabling the agency to scale operations while maintaining quality. These outcomes showcase Shirofune's ability to drive innovation, improve operational efficiency, and deliver tangible business value.

2. How important is automation in your digital advertising strategy, particularly features like automated budget allocation, bid adjustments, and target ROAS optimization?

In the digital advertising world, the be-all and end-all metric is ROAS. However, manual budget allocation makes optimizing ROAS nearly impossible: there are simply too many factors to stay on top of. Digital ad platforms, by contrast, make it quite easy.

ROAS is just one of the many objectives. The Shirofune platform makes testing against different objective optimizations significantly easier, so advertisers can better understand how changes in campaign goals can impact performance.

Shirofune is designed to handle cross-channel ad budget allocation using both data and AI — making real-time adjustments that human teams simply can't replicate at scale. 

○     Here is what the Shirofune platform can accomplish:

1.    Automated Budget Allocation:
Automatically adjusts daily ad spending based on performance data across all platforms. If Meta underperforms one day and Google is converting better, your budget shifts accordingly — no guesswork, no delays.

2.    Unified Strategy Layer:
Shirofune offers only one interface that manages, compares, and optimizes campaigns across multiple channels. This leads to faster decision-making and holistic budget planning.

3.    Continuous Optimization with AI:
The role of AI is paramount. AI doesn’t just track metrics — it learns from performance patterns over time and adjusts spend, bidding, and targeting dynamically.

Let’s take a client we have worked with for the past year. The ability to allocate appropriate budgets to each campaign and dynamically adjust target ROAS as per budgets can lead to a 10%+ increase in ROAS, including an 18% increase in clicks while reducing ad spend. By using Shirofune, the client was able to get a more accurate assessment of Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising performance.

3. What challenges have you faced in achieving seamless cross-platform budget allocation and performance analysis, and how are you addressing them?

We have helped many of our clients rely on Shirofune to automate their budget allocation based on performance data. Our system constantly compares campaigns and placements, identifying where each dollar delivered the strongest return. Budgets were shifted daily — sometimes hourly — toward top performers, and bid modifiers were adjusted across devices, times of day, and audiences. The platform’s automation ensured that spending followed results, not assumptions, which meant more budget went to what was working and none was wasted on what wasn’t.

4. What role does LTV-based optimization play in your advertising strategy, and how are you implementing it across campaigns?

Return on ad spend (ROAS) has traditionally been considered the gold standard for measuring the financial return of ad campaigns. Its primary focus is on short-term revenue, however, it doesn't consider either customer lifetime value (LTV) or new user acquisition, while indiscriminately mixing both new and existing customer conversions in its ROAS calculations. This narrow focus may please clients with immediate results but can overlook opportunities.

In contrast, Lifetime ROAS is emerging as a more holistic metric that assesses the value of acquiring new users as well as the long-term engagement and profitability of customers. By optimizing campaigns to identify and target customers with higher LTV, businesses can enhance their overall profitability and achieve sustainable growth.  

This information is continuously evaluated by the system and used to make real-time decisions that actually optimize ROI. These decisions are undergirded not just by primary data but by deep, AI-augmented analyses of performance patterns over time. In other words, these ad platforms are not merely reactive but predictive.

Instead of rapidly cycling between spreadsheets, advertisers can get an at-a-glance view of cross-platform campaign performance on a unified interface. Instead of groping in the dark to build monthly or quarterly ad budgets out of guesswork, they can undertake long-range planning with the kind of confidence that only AI-enhanced data can provide.

○     Data Accessibility: LTV-based ad management requires more robust data from a breadth of sources. For example, Google knows when people buy products on e-commerce platforms through its advertisements. Shopify, on the other hand, can identify whether customers are new or existing and can track if customers come in organically and when they make return purchases. Google does not have access to this range of data, so both of these sources would better enable LTV. Capturing and analyzing customer data benefits from integrating different elements, from customer relationship management (CRM) software to analytics tools, in order to better track and measure buyer behavior.

○     Predictive Modeling: Recent advances in artificial intelligence have increased predictive modeling capabilities. Predicting customer LTV accurately is crucial for making informed advertising decisions. By leveraging machine learning algorithms and historical customer data, businesses can build better predictive models to estimate LTV and allocate resources strategically.

○     Testing and Optimization: No matter how advanced technology tools become, humans will always need to fine-tune systems and course correct as needed. LTV-based ad management requires continuous testing and optimization. Experimenting with different ad creatives, platforms and targeting strategies is essential to identify the best-performing combinations that maximize LTV.

5. As your organization expands globally, how are you ensuring that your advertising management platforms can support diverse markets and regional requirements?

Shirofune is built on a philosophy of automating what experienced professionals desperately need—replicating human insight and decision-making at scale. Marketers and agencies require continuity, automation, and trusted support, and Shirofune’s goal is to offer advertisers an exciting new way forward for a complete digital marketing program.

Moreover, Shirofune continues to adapt to emerging channels such as programmatic and retail media, which are expected to grow significantly. As advertising complexity increases, Shirofune not only keeps pace with industry changes—it anticipates them, earning the trust of brands and agencies alike.” 

6. What strategies are in place to adapt your advertising campaigns to different cultural and market dynamics while maintaining brand consistency?

We need to change to -  what specific steps have you taken so that US agencies understand and appreciate Shirofune?:

The Shirofune ad platform has a 91% market share in Japan because it automates most of the work, cutting the time needed to manage online advertising by at least 50%. We want to replicate our success in Japan in North America, giving American marketers and agencies the same savings in time and the most optimized performance in ad spending. Shirofune streamlines and standardizes ad operations, is incredibly easy to use and delivers superior results and intelligence across all digital ad channels.

In order to bring Shirofune to the United States and other markets around the world, we have broadened our reach by joining more associations and organizations such as the Association of National Advertisers. 

We also are constantly updating the platform.  We recently announced the integration with Google’s DV360 (Display & Video 360), an enterprise-level demand-side platform (DSP) for programmatic ad campaigns.

Additionally, we integrated LinkedIn Ads into our digital advertising automation management platform. The integration offers advertisers and agencies the ability to manage their LinkedIn ad campaigns alongside other major platforms such as Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Pinterest, TikTok, BigCommerce, and Shopify.

Shirofunealso recently integrated with BigCommerce to predict and optimize ad campaigns based on customer lifetime value. The integration allows advertisers to connect ad performance data with customer lifecycle insights, including whether customers are new or returning, their purchasing behaviors, and predicted lifetime value.

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