Retooling the Campaign Targeting flow on Digital Advertising Software
Overview
Viant is a pioneer in people-based advertising — the next evolution in programmatic technology — providing marketers and media owners the tools to move beyond third-party cookies, enrich their first-party data, reach target audiences across emerging channels and measure success in today’s advertising landscape
GETTING STARTED
Project Type
A project involving the creative and research teams from Guidea, and the dev and stakeholder teams at VIANT.
I was the designer on the project, along with a researcher, and a PM on the Guidea team.
The task was to revamp and (hopefully) improve the entire process of setting up ad Targeting on the platform.
Initial problem discovery
While there already was an ad targeting flow in place, initial surveys showed that 11 of every 15 weren’t using the platform to its full potential.
These users were not confused about how to set up flows, they only didn’t take advantage of the flows that would’ve produced better results on their targeting.
This greatly impacted their perceived value of the tool.
Why was this? How do users miss these features? Did they not know it was possible to do more? (interface structure problem) or did they just not know the value of doing more? (presentation problem)
GETTING INFORMED
User interviews
We had extensive discussions with representatives from existing customer companies on why they didn’t take certain measures that could’ve produced better results.
Tell me about the last campaign ran.
What was the most difficult part of setting up your campaign?
Were the results desirable? How so?
If you were trying to accomplish X, why did you not do Y?
Interviewees have had varying level of success, for sure; they didn’t know that it was possible to achieve much better results.
Tell me about the last campaign ran.
What was the most difficult part of setting up your campaign?
Were the results desirable? How so?
If you were trying to accomplish X, why did you not do Y?
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Using ad-technologies to plan and implement data-driven digital advertising campaigns was not a saturated space by any means, however, it was still easy for us to explore already successful alternatives to VIANT to see what they did different.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
We looked at the available competition, and while they did things very differently.** it was still helpful to our process.
HOW MIGHT WE...
Make users naturally want to explore and take advantage of flows that might give their campaigns better results
BIGGEST HOLD BACK
There was already a (lot of) systems in place. This means whatever innovations and decisions we would make had to be in-line with the existing systems.
BIGGEST HOLD BACK
We also had some pushback from marketing, stating viable reasons certain features and experiences were that way from their perspectives.
BIGGEST HOLD BACK
There was already a (lot of) systems in place. This means whatever innovations and decisions we would make had to be in-line with the existing systems.
This was a challenge because our creativity and innovations were stifled, possibly by the same systems that bore the problems we were trying to solve
PROCESS
Because this was a really complicated flow, to measure the success of each acceptable iteration, it had to be developed for testing (at least to a degree). This means that we couldn’t rely on figma prototypes for reliable metrics. This extended the time on the project by a considerable degree.
PROCESS
Alongside the experience redesign, one of the additions we made was using tooltips broken apart by flows and actions.
PROCESS
Using Userbrain.com, we ran user testing on our developed ideas and iterations, so see which had the most chance of bettering the earlier research.
RESULTS
At the end of the exercise, and over the next three months, we recorded an increase in “expertise” ratio (13:18) from users who were new to the platform.
RESULTS
And an increase in “expertise” ratio (9:11) from users who were already used to the platform.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Sometimes, the most confining situations can lead you to much more innovative ways to solve problems.
kKEY TAKEAWAYS
What I would've done different
Seeing as the goal was to help users achieve their best possible results, I would’ve loved to work with the developers on how we could’ve automated some of the flows and processes, and in return helped users arrive at the best possible campaign results.
We could’ve done this by taking in data at specific points during the flows and using that to augment how the campaign plays out, like the way music apps try to predict what music you would like based on what you have been listening to. Of course this had much realer consequences than listening to music, and it was outside the scope of our work, but that was the general idea that I figured would’ve immensely pushed the odds in VIANT’s favour.
