Making a customizable ad preview tool for better performance
Our client’s backstory
Our client provides an all-around advertisement service, from media planning and buying to crafting digital ads and analyzing their performance for companies of all sizes, including big brands and emerging companies and products. They pride themselves in crafting the right stories and delivering them in the proper format to the targeted audience, as well as accurately measuring the success of their clients’ campaigns.
One of the significant market gaps they noticed was the many complexities surrounding the validation and approval of ad campaigns, which usually have to go through several organizational levels before they are posted.
The ad company partnered with Klika to build a custom ad preview tool to help customers gain better insight into the different stages of their ad campaigns and speed up the process. They wanted to simplify ad campaign setup with features that support better process visualization and timely feedback from all stakeholders before they are shared live. The tool also provided deep analytics of existing ad campaigns to reveal performance status, revenue overview, and the budget spent.
The challenges
As a team, we had to ensure we understood all the peculiarities related to the ad space and preview possibilities, as we needed to define the scope and requirements to build MVP from scratch. The Klika expert team was the sole team working on product discovery and had to set the direction and define features, milestones, and deadlines for the entire project.
On the technical side, the system had to be configurable and compatible with several platforms. It required a flexible, light architecture that easily adapts to different environments and third parties. On the other hand, it needed to support numerous features that can be customized to fit an array of different individual user needs supported in various geographic locations.
We needed to provide accurate data metrics to measure ad success and performance and enable automated reporting based on various parameters and impressions.
The entire ad preview system was envisioned as a holistic and intuitive tool that enhances performance and pinpoints what went right or wrong, giving users the opportunity for corrections and timely access to all stakeholders to do their part.
Klika solution
We created a clean product discovery roadmap for the entire SDLC and defined the requirements and the goals we needed to achieve (software and business goals). We assigned the right experts to the job and made using modern yet proven technologies a priority to maximize customer value.
One of the first things we did was identify the platforms, ad networks, and the types of ads the system would support. We covered all the biggest ad-based platforms, like Google Ads, Meta Ads, TikTok, and Amazon Ads. The system was multidimensional, supporting text, image, and video content.
We developed the front end and back end using the most fitting tech stack that allows for future adjustments and modifications and keeps pace with the fast-developing industry.
To make the ads run on Google, Meta, and other platforms, we enabled easy integration with many different APIs, allowing the users to generate previews and retrieve information about ad creatives.
We ensured ad previews could be generated based on advertisers’ input to make it custom and user-friendly.
Our team developed an appealing interface that allows advertisers to enter all kinds of details about their ads, including text, images, headlines, and the target audience.
We managed authentication through user accounts, and users can log in to manage their ad content. To optimize ad performance, we enabled features that suggest better ad performance, allow A/B testing, and try out different variations.
Results
The tool we developed helped the company provide a customized service that introduces new digital standards to the advertising industry. Most users report better ad performance, more stakeholder involvement, better engagement and user experience with the ad setup process, and a better performance-to-cost ratio.
Technology stack
JavaScript, React, Ruby on Rails
