Fly ROAS vs Smartly: Which AI Ad Platform Fits Your Brand?

At a glance

Smartly, at smartly.io, was founded in 2013 and describes itself as an AI advertising platform that brings creative and media together. Its pages organise the product into three suites. Creative covers generative AI production, templates, Producer for review and approval, and Creative Insights. Media covers multi-platform campaign management, catalogue management, automated triggers and Predictive Budget Allocation. Intelligence covers planning, performance and measurement. The site says more than 700 brands use it and names customers such as Samsung, Spotify, Uber and Ralph Lauren.

Fly ROAS is a much narrower product: a self-serve AI media buyer for Meta ads. It reads your brand, makes ads from your real product photos, launches them in your own Meta ad account and runs the tests, at a published monthly price. So the real question is scale and scope. Smartly is built for enterprise teams across many channels. Fly ROAS is built for brands whose growth runs mostly through Facebook and Instagram.

Where Fly ROAS is different

• Self-serve with a published price. You can sign up and launch on the same day. Smartly's site does not publish pricing and asks you to book a demo.
• Your packshot, checked. Every Fly ROAS ad is built on your real product photo, and a pre-flight check flags any ad where the label, text or colours drift. Brand DNA reads your logo, colours, fonts, products, prices and voice from your website in about 90 seconds.
• A testing method built in. Autopilot gives each test a 48-hour verdict, by default stops a test that spends 2× your target CPA without a sale (adjustable from 1.5× to 3×), and scales winners in +25%, +50% or +100% steps. Our guide to scaling Meta ads without killing ROAS explains why stepped increases matter.
• Guardrails you set. A monthly cap and daily limit only you can raise, and a default "Ask me first" mode where nothing launches or scales without your approval.
• Competitor radar. Fly ROAS decodes hooks, layouts and angles from competitors' long-running ads in the Meta Ad Library, without copying them.

Where Smartly is strong

• Channel breadth. Its platforms page lists Meta, Google, YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Reddit, Amazon, Spotify and Roku, and Smartly also sells CTV across what it says are 200+ streaming services, open-web ads through DSPs and conversational ads. Fly ROAS is Meta only.
• Creative at catalogue scale. Generative AI, templates and feeds turn large product catalogues into personalised ads, animations and video variations across markets. Its case studies describe brands such as Foot Locker and HelloFresh scaling creative this way.
• Cross-channel budget decisions. Predictive Budget Allocation shifts spend towards what it predicts will convert across channels and platforms, and automated triggers rotate ads to curb fatigue.
• Services alongside software. Onboarding, creative services (including UGC packages and HTML5 templates) and managed services where Smartly's team runs the advertising for you.
• Enterprise fit. Collaboration and approval in Producer, measurement through Smartly Intelligence and Brand Pulse, and the kind of support large organisations expect. Its site also cites recognition from Forrester.

Pricing compared

Smartly does not publish prices. On 26 October 2026 its pricing address returned a not-found page, and every product page pointed to booking a demo. Expect a quoted contract rather than a monthly plan, and ask how services are priced alongside the platform.

Fly ROAS starts with a 14-day test flight at $19.99 (₹1,939) with 100 credits, then Creator at $79/mo (₹7,663) with 400 credits, Pro at $149/mo (₹14,453) with 1,000 credits, Agency at $499/mo (₹48,403) with 4,000 credits or a custom Enterprise plan. Annual billing saves 20%. Credits pay only for AI generation: 2 per image ad and 20 per video ad. Autopilot is included in every plan, and Meta bills your ad spend directly.

Worked example: a brand spending $15,000 a month on Meta, with a few hundred products and no plans for CTV, can compare a quoted enterprise contract with Fly ROAS Pro at $149 a month for 3 brands and 3 ad accounts. If that brand also runs TikTok, Pinterest and YouTube at similar scale, Smartly's single platform may justify its price. Check your margins first with the break-even ROAS calculator.

Who should choose which

Choose Smartly if you are an enterprise brand or a large agency running significant budgets across several channels and markets, you need catalogue-driven creative at scale, and you want the vendor's people involved.

Choose Fly ROAS if Meta is your main channel, you want to start without a sales cycle, and you want ads that keep your exact packshot, tested inside limits you control. If you are still deciding how to structure your Meta account, our guide to Advantage+ sales campaigns is a good starting point.

Switching to Fly ROAS

The 14-day test flight costs $19.99 (₹1,939) and includes 100 credits (about 50 image ads), one brand and every feature: Brand DNA, competitor radar, AI creatives, one-click launch and Autopilot. Campaigns are created paused by default. There is no free tier or money-back guarantee, and the test flight renews to Creator unless you cancel. Compare every plan on the pricing page.