The Next Frontier: Dmytro Balan on AI’s Role in Blurring the Lines Between Small and Big E-commerce Businesses

Dmytro Balan, CEO of ThinkAd and a seasoned e-commerce expert, talks about automating Amazon advertising for businesses, especially for those with limited budgets, aiming to thrive in competitive markets 

Before now, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) often faced tough challenges due to limited ad budgets and a lack of expertise, thus making it hard for them to stand out. But presently, smart tools are helping them compete better. This matters a lot in e-commerce, where big platforms like Amazon dominate. According to a SellersCommerce research study, “AI in eCommerce Statistics (2025),” 34% of Amazon sellers already use AI to improve listings, while another 14% use it to handle marketing and content creation. This shows that AI is becoming key to helping businesses gain an edge.

Yet, a critical question remains: What happens to the 66% who don’t yet leverage these powerful AI tools, and are these sophisticated solutions truly accessible to small businesses? That’s where specialists like Dmytro Balan make a difference. Dmytro, an experienced e-commerce and digital marketing expert with over eight years of experience, understands the struggles of scaling advertising budgets. As the marketing strategist at Lev Brands, a company pulling in over $50 million annually, he has witnessed these challenges firsthand. His experience handling big ad budgets motivated him to work on tools that open access to smarter ad management.  Based in Boca Raton, Florida, USA, Dmytro started as a hands-on Amazon seller before he founded ThinkAd, adjudged the 2025 “Best SaaS Ecommerce Platform,” to automate Amazon advertising for SMBs.

Dmytro stepped into the world of Amazon sales in 2017, where he didn’t just walk his path as a seller but also played a role in helping many other business owners launch and grow their brands. His main skills center on Amazon advertising and promoting products. This includes planning ad placements, studying competitors, creating ad campaigns, and boosting returns on ad spending. In recognition of his numerous achievements, Dmytro was recently selected as a judge in the 2025 Globee® Awards for Disruptors, where he evaluated no fewer than 50 submissions, highlighting his deep knowledge in identifying and celebrating remarkable innovations. We spoke with him to hear more about his journey, his groundbreaking platform, ThinkAd, and how AI gives modern businesses an edge in today’s digital world.

Dmytro, at Lev Brands, you handle a monthly ad budget exceeding $300,000, which is a big responsibility in the e-commerce world. Based on your experience, what’s the most common mistake you see small or medium-sized businesses make when they try to scale their Amazon ads? 

Thank you for bringing up such an important topic. The biggest issue I see is how much people underestimate dynamic optimization while leaning too much on manual methods. Many businesses, especially small ones, either lack the know-how or don’t have the time to keep tweaking, tracking bids, finding new keywords, and cutting wasted spending. They often set up their campaigns and just forget them, or they try to handle everything manually, which wastes a lot of time. This drains budgets on bad keywords, ignores chances to use great ones, and results in way less return on ad spend (ROAS) than they could get. The e-commerce world, particularly on Amazon, moves too fast for strategies that stay the same.

That makes sense. Considering these challenges, how do you work to close this gap and support businesses in avoiding these common mistakes? 

After noticing the same challenges pop up, I built our own AI platform, ThinkAd, to fix them. ThinkAd makes it easy for Amazon sellers to run ad campaigns by automating everything with three simple inputs: minimum bid, maximum bid, and target spend percentage. The system’s algorithms check ad performance live, stop bad keywords, move the budget around, and tweak bids. This lets even people new to pay-per-click (PPC) handle ads without needing expert-level knowledge. Unlike other options out there, ThinkAd was built for SMBs, works right out of the box, and does not need a team of specialists to operate. Its strength is in creating ad plans specific to each business’s goals, something most competitors do not provide. Our proprietary algorithms, like the Wasted Spend System, make this possible by identifying spots where money is wasted and automatically optimizing bids accordingly. There’s also the Keyword Harvesting Engine, which finds new useful keywords from promising search queries, and Irrelevant Words Detection, which spots and removes non-target queries that generate no sales. Finally, the fourth algorithm, which is Campaign Health Notifications, ensures all campaigns, ad groups, and keywords remain active and effective. ThinkAd runs by itself with very little need for human help, though users can see and control every choice the system makes.

That’s quite interesting! You started your e-commerce journey in 2017, with a focus on democratizing professional ad automation. How did that experience shape how ThinkAd came to be? 

My work focuses on marketing, tech, and entrepreneurship. Since 2017, I’ve been involved in e-commerce and marketplace advertising, concentrating on selling through Amazon. Over the years, I didn’t just work as a seller myself; I also supported many business owners in launching and growing their brands on Amazon. My core strength lies in Amazon advertising and managing product promotion. This covers everything from planning placement and analyzing competitors to creating ad strategies and boosting ad campaign returns. In recent years, I worked on ThinkAd, a system to help sellers better handle bid adjustments, spot wasted ad spend, and improve campaign performance. My hands-on experience played a big role in shaping the platform’s design, optimization algorithms, and user processes.

Right now more than 100 active U.S. clients are using ThinkAd in a closed testing phase, with the system already managing over $500,000 in monthly advertising budgets. Can you quantify the impact the platform has had on your clients? 

By using intelligent systems at ThinkAd, our clients have reduced ad costs by 20–35% while also maintaining or boosting their sales numbers. Some even saw their return on ad spend (ROAS) jump almost double. Thanks to automation, the time needed to manage ads dropped by 60–70%. Since 2024, we’ve collected over 40 verbal client testimonials. Many have said that ThinkAd made hiring an in-house marketer or external agency unnecessary. Plus, with the Wasted Spend System feature, over 80% of users stopped blowing money on irrelevant keywords.

That seems like a huge return on investment (ROI) for businesses. Outside of just making money, what wider effects do you see or expect from ThinkAd?  

I believe that the impact of ThinkAd reaches far and wide. It shows that technological innovations can generate real economic value in the U.S. This includes supporting American manufacturing, creating jobs, and helping small businesses grow. ThinkAd’s work has a social side too. It gives small businesses, who couldn’t afford it, a chance to use pro-level ad optimization. Our mission focuses on helping sellers with limited resources run ads, save money, and grow profits.

Your work with ThinkAd aims to challenge the usual ways small and medium businesses handle e-commerce advertising, and your ability to spot market gaps and bring forward innovative solutions stands out. This focus on innovation appears to be getting more attention as you were recently picked as a judge for the prestigious 2025 Globee® Awards for Disruptors. How do you go about reviewing these kinds of innovations, and what does taking on this role mean to you? 

Being chosen as a judge in the Globee® Awards feels both special and rewarding. It matches my deep interest in identifying real innovation in the e-commerce world. I see it as a way to help highlight solutions that don’t just make small changes but transform how industries work. When reviewing entries, I focus on how well they solve problems, how far they can grow, and the difference they make. I appreciate ideas that understand customer struggles and deliver unique and practical solutions that others can use. It’s also about seeing how these ideas might create lasting value for society or the economy down the road. Personally, it also confirms my belief in the power of AI to transform automation for SMBs.

That sounds good! Based on its impressive performance so far, ThinkAd recently earned the 2025 “Best SaaS Ecommerce Platform” award from the ECDMA Global Association. So, what’s ahead for ThinkAd, and how do you picture its growth as e-commerce keeps changing? 

Automation is making the line between small and large businesses on Amazon disappear. The hard part is figuring out how small family businesses in Florida, as well as other small entrepreneurs, can compete against big businesses without needing huge budgets. Smart algorithms are the answer. Our mission goes beyond just gaining clients. We care about creating real impact. Right now, we’re working on solidifying our presence and improving our AI tools. We’re also looking at the possibility of teaming up with other e-commerce platforms outside Amazon. On top of that, we’re planning to step into the European and Asian markets. This expansion should open up new job opportunities here in the U.S. in areas like support, AI, development, and business. Over the long haul, we aim to set the standard for ad automation, not just on Amazon but also for multichannel marketing platforms. We’re planning to start the ThinkAd Academy to teach and certify users, giving them more control. We want to create a space where advanced advertising technology becomes the norm for anyone trying to achieve success.

Great! As someone who has achieved success in the e-commerce and tech world, helping ThinkAd lower clients’ ad costs by 20–35% and Lev Brands earn over $50 million a year, what advice would you give to up-and-coming entrepreneurs or small businesses trying to use technology to grow and compete in today’s market? 

From my journey while building ThinkAd, I realized one big thing: technology is just a tool, but understanding your customer’s real problems is the foundation. Before writing a single line of code, we spent months sitting down with sellers, hearing their struggles with ad management. So, you can’t create solutions in isolation. You need to understand the real problems. Also, automation is powerful, but you need to know its purpose. Don’t automate just because you can. Automate things to unlock human creativity and allow for better strategic decisions. My past, including surviving tough situations in Ukraine and dealing with scarce resources, taught me the value of being resilient and working smart on meaningful problems. Finally, your own experiences and personal data matter a lot in getting great results. Always ask for feedback, adjust, and keep growing. The digital world shifts so fast that continuous learning isn’t optional. It’s now mandatory if you want to achieve long-term success.

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