Power Digital Unleashes AI to Scale Marketing Impact and Strengthen Client ROI

Power Digital isn’t your typical marketing agency: It’s a tech-powered growth machine built for the future. Sitting at the crossroads of marketing, consulting and data intelligence, Power helps both industry giants and rising brands increase revenue and amplify their presence. 

The secret sauce? nova, its proprietary platform built on Snowflake. Transforming first-party data into game-changing intelligence, nova is making investment planning for marketing smarter and more strategic. With billions of dollars in advertising spend, Power’s team of marketers, creatives, analysts and technologists challenge outdated playbooks with relentless testing, data science and a consultative approach. This ensures every campaign isn’t just a guess, it’s a calculated win.

With nova, Power has the agility to turn vast amounts of data into actionable insights at lightning speed. With Snowflake’s powerful infrastructure, nova integrates AI-driven analytics to enable smarter decision-making, streamlined operations and a competitive edge that keeps Power Digital and its clients at the forefront of innovation.

Power understands that first-party data is both an asset and a responsibility. “We consider ourselves the stewards of our clients’ first-party data,” says John Saunders, VP of Product at Power Digital Marketing. “It’s not just about using data to drive strategy, but doing it responsibly and making sure each client’s data is safe.”

Amazon Redshift had once been a solid choice for Power’s data warehouse, but as workloads grew, so did the headaches. Managing Redshift meant constant manual resizing of clusters, leading to operational slowdowns and delays. Performance lagged under increasing data volumes, forcing a never-ending cycle of query optimization and workload management. 

Beyond infrastructure struggles, Power faced another bottleneck: time. Answering data-related questions required a tedious, multi-step process — writing SQL queries, running analyses and manually delivering insights — all of which drained technical resources and slowed decision-making for the business. For clients, the challenge was even greater. Many lacked the in-house SQL or database querying expertise to extract real value from their data, leaving critical insights untapped.

Power Digital needed a data solution that could keep up with their rapid growth without locking them into a rigid ecosystem or requiring complex consulting — one that would allow for continuous evolution with the latest AI technologies. The team turned to Snowflake.

No longer bogged down by legacy architecture, the team could test new ideas quickly, spinning up minimum viable versions of capabilities in hours. “Snowflake focuses on how we serve and structure the data without bias toward any specific platform, ensuring that everything we do is centered on delivering results for the client,” says Saunders.  

With Snowflake, Power could seamlessly handle increasing data volumes, while advanced security features — like encryption, role-based access controls and secure data sharing — would ensure both internal and client data stayed protected. 

After assessing schemas and dependencies, the team built and tested ETL pipelines to move 20TB of historical data to Snowflake, ensuring accuracy throughout; running both environments in parallel minimized downtime and ensured a smooth transition. The result was nova, Power’s centralized data warehouse and single source of truth, built to fuel the next era of data-driven marketing.

Employees rely on nova daily to access customer insights, run discoveries, analyze data points and refine client strategies. “Built on Snowflake, nova is the tab that employees have open every day,” says Saunders. With Snowflake’s speed and efficiency, complex queries now run five times faster. Using development tools like Streamlit and worksheets, proof-of-concept timelines that once took weeks are completed in days. 

Power’s data analytics team ensures seamless functionality across nova’s applications, helping internal teams and external clients make the most of their data. One of nova’s truly unique applications is Creative Affinity, a system that measures how ad creative influences customer lifetime value (LTV) across platforms like TikTok and Meta. “Instead of focusing solely on click-through rates and conversions, Creative Affinity connects first-party data to ad creative, optimizing for high-value customers,” says Saunders. “We also use forecasting to predict long-term performance based on budget adjustments.”

For one hair care client, Power used Creative Affinity to discover that the highest-LTV customers responded best to hair transformation videos. Once they shifted budget and content production accordingly, they increased LTV by 14%. “The success of any big business relies on high customer lifetime value, which comes from understanding customers deeply: their pain points, traits, psychographics, demographics and more,” says Ben Dutter, Chief Strategy Officer. “nova helps create a symbiotic value chain where customers benefit by sharing feedback, and brands use it to offer better recommendations. Building that relationship is crucial.”

With nova, Power’s small and mid-market clients now have access to enterprise-grade tools that were once reserved for the big players. “Even an unskilled ‘practitioner’ can interpret and analyze nova’s data and get actionable answers,” says Dutter. “Custom solutions might take months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. With nova, brands can connect their data and get powerful analysis tools in just 24 hours.” 

Many of nova’s features were designed to eliminate the need for time-consuming manual analysis. Tasks that used to take 15-20 hours of work from data scientists are now automated, saving clients valuable resources. Businesses which typically couldn’t afford custom analytics tools or lengthy consulting projects can now access powerful insights without breaking the bank.

To speed up decision-making and improve efficiency for both clients and employees, Power collaborated with Snowflake's Solution Innovation Team to prototype and evaluate different gen AI architectures and models to deliver a “chat with your data” experience for nova. Snowflake's Cortex Analyst-managed service provided the highest accuracy coupled with simplest architecture, and a new functionality — Insights AI — was born. 

Before, getting insights meant waiting for reports or tracking down help. Now employees can dive into data and act on it instantly. Though it is still in its early stages, Saunders is optimistic it will have a lasting impact. “Snowflake Cortex Analyst has significantly accelerated our progress. Accuracy, speed and positive user feedback are strong.”

Using Insights AI, users can interact with their intel through natural language, democratizing data and eliminating the need to chase down information, set up reports or troubleshoot filters. “Elevating productivity isn’t just about making things easier; it’s about helping everyone be their most knowledgeable and effective selves,” says Dutter. “Insights AI allows us to make complex, multi-tabular data accessible without needing to know SQL or Python, or having to rely on a data team.”

By leveraging Cortex within their Snowflake environment, Power created a flexible, rapidly adaptable system. “As AI evolves, we can test and switch between different models, ensuring our product remains at the cutting edge,” says Saunders. “While users experience seamless performance on the front end, we’re constantly optimizing behind the scenes. The future is dynamic, and so is our approach, adapting quickly to deliver the best insights in real time.”

Power also uses nova to automate testing and analysis. Last year alone, they ran about 500 incrementality tests and thousands of media mix modeling reports for clients. “That strengthens ROI for our clients and leads to their continued expansion, tenure and retention with Power,” says Dutter.

The impact nova has had across Power’s teams is undeniable: for IT, it optimizes performance, reduces costs and speeds up time to value. On the business side, it drives revenue growth, mitigates risks, fosters innovation and enhances the customer experience. Combined with Snowflake’s scalability, real-time analytics and unified data platform, nova is positioned to help fuel Power’s next chapter of growth and innovation. 

As Dutter explains, nova’s next era will move toward dynamic analysis: proactively identifying insights, patterns and hypotheses. For example, it will flag when a client might be unhappy or show signs of wanting to expand their scope, allowing teams to reach out and take action. “The goal is for nova to act as a ‘second brain,’ guiding account managers and strategists with timely, proactive suggestions,” says Dutter. 

Snowflake’s capabilities are enabling Power to push its 2025 roadmap forward, including forging ahead with AI/ML innovations like nova GPT, deeply integrating with platforms like YouTube and TradeDesk, and expanding into new markets securely and efficiently. And Snowflake will be there as Power Digital Marketing delivers on its mission to redefine what’s possible and put its partners ahead of the curve, every time.