Casual Precision is a media agency that competes on measurement. Founded in 2015 and based in California, it plans and buys advertising for brands across radio, podcasts, television and connected TV, and it wins work by proving what that spend actually delivers. The analytics behind that has always been its edge. The ambition was to turn it into a scalable product.
The challenge
Casual Precision set out to turn powerful but bespoke attribution and data modelling into a platform, and to offer that platform to other small media agencies so they could compete with the large networks.
That ambition rests on data collection. The modelling is only as good as the data that reaches it, and at platform scale the collection layer has to hold up on four fronts.
Scale, because a platform only earns the name when adding a customer is a configuration change rather than a build. Privacy, because healthcare customers need infrastructure built to HIPAA requirements, and finance and consumer brands increasingly expect comparable control without the legislation behind it. Performance, because agencies selling to enterprise clients are held to enterprise standards. Auditability, because holding customer data on behalf of another agency means being able to show what was collected, where it went and who had access to it.
Casual Precision’s team is focused on modelling, which is where its value to clients sits. The scalable capture infrastructure the business needed in order to grow is a different discipline.
Our approach
We were engaged to build the data collection platform underneath Casual Precision’s offering, not the modelling that sits on top of it. Two things mattered from the start: getting a working platform in front of real customers, and building it so Casual Precision could run it without us.
Privacy had to be designed in, not added later. We built three separate collection lanes with different privacy characteristics, from a standard commercial posture through to infrastructure built to HIPAA requirements. Customers are assigned the appropriate lane when they join, allowing Casual Precision to serve a healthcare brand and a retail brand from the same product.
Scale meant taking engineering out of the path to a new customer. Bringing one live is now a defined set of steps with the provisioning automated, so Casual Precision’s own team can do it. A service grows by hiring. A platform grows by selling.
Performance was proven rather than assumed. We load tested the platform to find where its limits actually sit, and built monitoring that raises an alert when data stops arriving. That last point matters more than it sounds. If collection fails quietly, the models keep producing answers and nobody knows they are wrong.
Auditability was built in from the start. Data is checked on arrival, encrypted, and traceable, and access to it is logged. When a regulated prospect runs a supplier review, Casual Precision has answers ready.
We then extended the platform to meet customers where they already are, adding mobile app measurement through existing providers and a direct route for customers sending data from their own systems. Each addition removes a reason for a prospect to say no.
The whole engagement was aimed at handover. We documented implementation and operation, trained the team, advised on the first live deployments, and helped recruit the person who will own the process permanently.
Outcomes
Casual Precision now has a scalable, privacy-conscious data collection platform that its own team can operate, opening the product to more customers without adding engineering effort for each one.
A platform, not a project
A growing set of customers is live on the platform today, collecting from websites and from mobile apps, all running on the same infrastructure rather than a separate build for each. Adding a customer is now a repeatable process the Casual Precision team runs itself. Winning new business no longer costs engineering time, and the client base is no longer limited by how much bespoke work the team can absorb.
A wider market to sell into
Casual Precision can take on a healthcare brand needing infrastructure built to HIPAA requirements and a retail brand with ordinary commercial requirements, from the same product, without a separate build for either. The business no longer has to choose which kind of customer it is built for.
Proven at the volumes that matter
Load testing confirmed the platform is viable for the largest customers Casual Precision would want to win, and that costs rise in a controlled way as volume grows. Collection failures are detected and raised automatically, and access to customer data is controlled and logged.
Answers ready for the difficult questions
Security and compliance reviews decide deals. Casual Precision now has the documentation and operational knowledge to answer questions about security, compliance or setup without waiting on an engineer.
“What I liked about working with Vaul was that they understood we didn’t want to become dependent on them. They built the platform, helped us get it into production, documented it properly and then made sure our team could run it.”
Kevin O’Reilly, CTO, Casual Precision
Expertise on call
Vaul Labs continues to work with Casual Precision on a shared roadmap, providing specialist support and enhancements as they are needed. The business gets access to skills it would otherwise have to hire permanently, at a stage where that headcount would be hard to justify.
Turning a strong service into a sellable platform requires more than the capability that differentiates it. Collection, compliance, monitoring and documentation determine whether the business can grow without headcount growing at the same rate. Casual Precision brought in the specialist capability to build that layer properly, kept its own team focused on the modelling clients pay for, and came out with a product it owns and can run.