What are the data needs of advertisers when creating a campaign on Ad Studio?

When

August 2022

Client

Spotify

The Problem

To improve the experience of the advertisers creating campaigns on Ad Studio, we needed to understand the needs advertisers have. We had a baseline understanding of the users' needs while planning the campaign and after launching the campaign.

I conducted product research from initial design and recruitment through the final deliverable.

What I did

• Scoped foundational research in partnership with user researchers and stakeholders from the product and design teams
• Led 10 moderated user interviews to understand the needs and pain points of advertisers
• Utilised 1:1 interviews to co-create current and desired campaign creation user journeys
• Produced novel findings and actionable recommendations from unstructured interview data
• Presented findings to a cross-functional team with the goal of initiating valuable product improvements across the creation flow user journey
• Created multiple forms of dissemination of the findings to engage immediate and secondary stakeholders

Outcomes

The research findings are still being quoted 6 months later.

• influenced the product team’s approach to tackling inaccuracies in forecasted data, prioritised for Q4.
• served as a starting point to re-envision how data is shown in the audience sizer in a workshop led by the design team with product, design management, and user research.
• helped shape the approach of design to think more holistically about the audience sizer

Here is what my manager had to say about my work:

Insights

The research helped the team understand the advertiser’s need for recommendations at every step of the creation flow user journey.

Four main takeaways included:

• Be a guide, not a dictator: Even though advertisers want guidance from the platforms to make decisions on targeting, scheduling, budgeting, and creative steps, taking away any control, especially if the related forecasts turn out to be inaccurate, is seen as a red flag.
• Show me the ‘why’: Surfacing any recommendations needs to be done along with the rationale. The rationale includes benefits as per the forecasted numbers and relevance to the advertiser’s unique context based on industry standards and/or the advertiser’s similar successful campaign.
• Offer information upfront: Advertisers appreciate all the information upfront than any surprises later. This is especially important for information related to underspending and audience targeting.
• Past & future informs the present: Advertisers make decisions based on data from the past, forecasted data, and industry trends (market data). Providing a space for them to access all the different sources of data can be really valuable.

Optimizing for goals of advertisers. Spotify’s self-serve ad platform. Image credits: Spotify

Conducting a brainstorming session with the cross-functional team after I shared the insights and recommendations. I focused on three questions: What stood out? What needs more digging and What are some product opportunities?

Reflections

I had a great learning experience and was delighted to hear about my research being quoted more than 6 months later. Working on a research project end to end helped me learn a lot about Spotify, the Ads space, and User research.

Some of my key reflections include:

1. Doing research is not valuable unless and until as a researcher, you can identify the ‘so what?’.
2. As a user researcher, identify clear next steps for different teams by building on the research. Be strategic by including short and long-term gains through the research and findings.
3. Different stakeholders consume content in different ways, and presenting the insights and recommendations in the format that works for them will make your work go long way. Having a short workshop brainstorming the next steps with your immediate stakeholders can be a handy way to create empathy for your end users.
4. Documenting decisions and interesting findings at the moment they emerge can be tedious but can enrich the final outcome and build a strong foundation of research to be shared.