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TV advertising marketplace

Mission

FreeWheel, a Comcast company, provides comprehensive ad platforms for publishers, advertisers, and media buyers. Powered by premium video content, robust data, and advanced technology, FreeWheel makes it easier for buyers and sellers to transact across all screens, data types, and sales channels.

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Solution

As an agnostic ad serving platform, this SaaS product is used by some of the largest broadcasters in the US and Europe where millions of dollars flow seamlessly through the proprietary platform. I was part of a team to build out the industry’s first marketplace that allows publishers and advertisers to trade directly and indirectly via complex business rules while meeting strict TV industry compliance regulations and ever-evolving technical capabilities.

The reimagined supplySuite UI workflow dramatically improved operational efficiency. Enhanced ad serving and forecasting algorithms ensured less money was left on the table.

Enterprise B2B marketplace available on desktop.

Product Manager
(2019-2022)

My responsibilities included reworking the supply side workflow within a new UI experience to optimise operational efficiency. More details below.
ETC workshop

User research

Product Discovery

  • Goal: Engage with clients to identify workflow and integration issues as well as ad serving behaviour pain points.
  • Action: 1. Conducted workshops and meetings with internal client solutions teams to talk through operational workflows and monetisation issues that their clients had raised. 2. Conversations with TV broadcasters (NBCU, Discovery, A+E) and distributors (Comcast, Charter) for direct user feedback.
  • Result: Used learnings to incorporate requirements into new marketplace tech, that led to customer gross revenue increasing by 63%.
Boro user flow

Workflow design

Product Development

  • Goal: Work with newly formed Product Design team to solution an easy-to-understand and easy-to-use seller end-to-end workflow.
  • Action: 1. Created product specs that included cross-functional behaviours including workflow, ad serving, reporting, forecasting and troubleshooting to ensure expected actions and interactions can still be observed by the client.
    2. Led ideation-to-release cross-functional collaboration with client services, revenue and product marketing to ensure release feasibility, mitigate risk and meet key KPIs.
  • Result: Launched two-sided TV marketplace MVP in 3 months, enabling buyers and sellers to connect using data, targeting and measurement of digital and linear TV inventory across all screens and sales channels via a simplified and intuitive UX/UI workflow. Resulted in 35% increased operational productivity and 95% on-schedule ad delivery (previously at 55%) Successfully ran 6 client pilot tests while maintaining client partner relationship risks and trust with clients.

UAT plan

Product Development

  • Goal: Create user acceptance testing plan for product and client solutions team, to be used after each release.
  • Action: Created clear and detailed quality assurance plans to test and refine product features prior to rollout.
  • Result: Exhaustive testing led to 99% user-focused bugs, errors and issues being fixed before each production release.

Roadmap

Product Planning & Development

  • Goal: Build roadmap for seller user workflow focused on enhancing the product experience for users.
  • Action: Used data points such as a product analytics app, UEQ surveys and direct customer/internal client solutions feedback.
  • Result: Tied in directly with company goals and KPIs to drive ~$100 million gross revenue through the marketplace platform.
Photo by Lisheng Chang on Unsplash

Distributed workforce

Product Planning & Development

  • Goal: Work with cross-functional teams based in Beijing, London, France and various states in the US.
  • Action: 1. Led a team of 10 Beijing-based engineers overseeing the development of new workflows and data model integrations while focusing on clear, detailed requirements and prioritisation through weekly meetings and daily touchpoint via email, slack, confluence and jira. 2. Mentored junior team members on product design and development.
  • Result: 1. Successfully rolled out features in each sprint. Of 105 requirements, released 40% of complex features in 2 years. 2. Mentorship resulted in team members' growth opportunities.

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Product Planning & Development

  • Task
  • Action
  • Result

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Achievements

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Heading

Achievements

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  • Her extensive perceived may any meaning sincerity extremity.
  • Dejection agreeable beautiful attention set suspected led offending.
  • Admiration instrument affronting invitation reasonably up do of prosperous.
  • Catherine To
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