Programmatic Advertising Platform

Context
Advance is Loblaws’ self-serve programmatic advertising platform that enables retail brands and advertisers to run data-driven campaigns across its digital network. As part of its strategic growth, Loblaws aimed to improve the audience targeting flow, streamline campaign creation, and launch a new self-serve feature—positioned as a value-added, subscription-based offering to expand services and drive additional revenue.
UX Designer & Systems Analyst
Usability Testing, Design QA, Design Ops, Quality Control
My role
To improve the campaign creation experience, enable real-time ad bidding, and introduce scalable self-serve features.
30% reduction in campaign setup time.

2x increase in usage of targeting tools

100% task success rate in guided usability tests -on self serve feature.

40% of existing users subscribed for self-serve feature, analytics from internal marketing teams.
⭐ Goal
🎯 Result
  1. Users struggled to find and select the right audiences based on real purchase data
  2. The campaign setup process lacked clarity in objectives, targeting, and bidding
  3. The UI was inconsistent, with weak visual hierarchy, audience data-set filter options and a fragmented pattern system
  4. Accessibility and workflow logic needed significant changes to introduce self-serve functionality
Challenges

Timeline

Industry

Product

Jan 2024 - July 2024

Healthcare, Pharmaceutical

B2B SaaS platform

Team

Tools

1 UX (myself), 4 PO, 1 UX lead

Figma, Miro, Illustrator, Jira, Confluence, WCAG

Project Details

My Approach

Design Research

  • Conducted comparative analysis of competitor platforms and performed heuristic evaluations of the existing interface
  • Facilitated user interviews with internal advertisers and marketing teams to understand current pain points and self-serve goals
  • Documented screen-flows and user journeys, validating screen behavior against wireframes and requirements
  • Mapped out a new self-serve flow using flowcharts and Miro boards for cross-functional alignment
  • Conducted accessibility reviews to identify AODA/WCAG gaps and improvement areas

User Experience & Interface Design

  • Led design for major workflows like campaign creation, targeting, bidding, and campaign overview
  • Designed high-fidelity wireframes and prototypes in Figma, with interactive flows to test with stakeholders
  • Introduced goal-driven objective selection and dynamic bidding input features to improve ad performance control
  • Reorganized the information architecture for improved content grouping and easier feature discoverability
  • Worked iteratively in an Agile environment, participating in sprint planning, grooming, and design handoffs

Design System & Localization

Showing Audience piece within Campaign setup flow
My detailed comparative analysis of advertising market's largest competitors of campaign creation and overview flows.

Systems Thinking & Design Ops

  • Creating a combined Design System that works for different advertising modules, ensuring component scalability and UI consistency across modules.
  • Piloted version control and file organization within Figma due to growing features & design work at fast pace. Created Loom videos to maintain team alignment on file usage & versioning.
  • Designed flexible UI modules to handle different ad formats and future scalability
  • Collaborated with developers and BAs to align on system logic, constraints, and feasibility
  • Performed design QA during the SIT phase to ensure visual and functional accuracy, working closely with QA to flag and resolve discrepancies

Final Designs

Below is the high-fidelity prototype of the off-site programmatic advertising platform 'Advance Media'. It is showing Campaign overview and Campaign creation flows with major improvements to audience piece.
Wireframe showing campaign dashboard.

Parameters to filter the 'all campaigns' view,
Objectives tracking that are currently on focus, Metrics at a glance like amount spent & impressions, And a table showing all campaigns along with status.
User can click into a campaign for a detailed 'view campaign' page.

Campaign Dashboard

View Campaign

New Campaign setup

New Campaign setup in progress