Coding Experience ZERO 🦘 Vibe Coding Diaries: The Instagram Ads Edition
Unlike those self-proclaimed success gurus who tell you to just believe in yourself and follow their lead, this sloppy kangaroo 🦘 Kang Geol-woo documents the real joys, heartbreaks, and desperate flailing of an actual vibe coder — live and unfiltered.
So I finally put up my first promotional Threads post targeting Japanese users. Can I rest now? It’s the weekend, right?
I closed my eyes for a bit, and when I woke up, that Japanese promo post — the one I’d made after betraying my own principles — was sitting at a grand total of roughly 100 views.
This isn’t going to cut it. What now? Fine — let’s throw money at it. Ads it is. Where? Instagram. Let’s go.
And so, just ten minutes ago, I wrapped up launching Instagram ads for COALA-LiVE in six countries. This post is my record so I don’t forget what the hell I just did.
Once Again, ChatGPT Is All I’ve Got
I pick up right where I left off in the same ChatGPT session I used earlier this morning to craft that Japanese Threads promo.
“Pick me the top countries where I can promote COALA-LiVE on Instagram with the best bang for my buck.”
Out of the 28 languages COALA-LiVE supports, ChatGPT lays out which countries offer the cheapest video ad rates and explains why. The shortlist includes 🇮🇳 India — English-speaking but rock-bottom CPC — the Arabic-market testbed 🇪🇬 Egypt, and the population powerhouse of Southeast Asia 🇮🇩 Indonesia, among others.
Now that the hit list is locked in, time to localize the promo videos. I fire up CapCut and start dropping in the local-language copy ChatGPT generated. I can’t actually read any of it, so for all I know ChatGPT might’ve slipped in something like “this app is trash” — but what choice do I have? AI is the only brain I can lean on right now.
Unlike the videos I attached to that first Japanese Threads post, this time I layer in my own music as the background track. My thinking: since I’m paying for the ads anyway, the platform isn’t going to throttle reach just because the BGM is copyrighted. And honestly, ads feel less awkward with some audio behind them.
Writing Captions and Baking In a Coupon Code
With the ads ready, each localized video gets its own Instagram post — so I head back to ChatGPT for the caption copy. I’m about to paste it in when I realize something’s missing.
I hop over to the COALA-LiVE admin dashboard and generate a coupon code good for 200 free minutes. For the Indian audience I name it EAT_PRAY-LOVE-APRIL — a little Bollywood-flavored wink — and drop it into the post copy.
Switching to Creator and Burning Cash
All the ingredients are prepped. I open Instagram and flip my account from Personal to Creator — that’s the prerequisite for running ads.
Next: payment method. I fish out the shiny new corporate card — linked to the Kang Geol-woo Works business account at KakaoBank, delivered just two days ago — and register it.
And then… the budget question. I’m broke. But this is no time for timidity. I set the total budget at about $370 USD and configure each country at roughly $11/day × 7 days.
For each country I create two ads under the same settings: a university online lecture version and an online interview version. My plan is to watch them for a couple of days, keep the one with the lower CPC, and kill the other.
Phew. That’s a wrap.
Handing the Reins to Kookaburra
Last order of business: I ping Kookaburra, our AI marketing team member at Kang Geol-woo Works, over on Slack. I brief it on which countries I targeted, how I structured each campaign, and the individual ad conditions. Kookaburra scolds me for not consulting it first.
But the sulking doesn’t last long — it agrees to check user traffic once every hour from now on. And with that, the ad launch is officially done. Time to write it all up for the blog.
