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Ad Monetization Platform for Publishers & Advertisers

2012–2016

Head of Design at PubMatic, 2012–16, the platform publishers use to sell their ad space. I grew design from four designers in Pune to seven designers and a researcher across Pune, Redwood City and New York, working with about four product managers and more than 200 engineers. I led the design of PubMatic Analytics, which launched in October 2014 as the industry’s first real-time analytics for publishers, with a search bar you could ask in plain English.

2012 to 2016

Growing design at PubMatic

  1. Starting design

    Problem

    Design was four people in Pune, with no one in the US, and no one owning how the product felt to use.

    Solution

    I reviewed the whole publisher product against usability heuristics, and in March pitched my plan for design to the executives.

    Impact

    By June the Pune team had shared tools, a way of working with engineering, and a first round of usability fixes in production.

  2. Asking users

    Problem

    Everyone had an opinion about the product, but no one had asked the people using it.

    Solution

    We surveyed every user of the publisher product. 115 of about 285 answered.

    Impact

    64% found it slow and barely bearable, and 37% didn’t know help existed. Speed, help and shared UI standards became our plan for the rest of the year.

  3. The iPad app

    Problem

    Publishers could only check their revenue at a desk, in a product built for setup rather than a quick look.

    Solution

    We designed PubMatic’s first iPad app: a dashboard of revenue and performance a publisher could check anywhere.

    Impact

    It came out at the end of October 2012, our first product designed for touch.

  4. Fixing the demo

    Problem

    Sales pitched from a demo with wrong numbers and broken pages, and every fix was a fire drill.

    Solution

    With sales, product and engineering, we corrected the demo data page by page and added the media buyer product.

    Impact

    A working demo by mid-January, one owner for it, and a ticket for every change instead of an urgent email.

  5. A product for media buyers

    Problem

    PubMatic was built for publishers. Advertisers and agencies buying its inventory had no product of their own.

    Solution

    We designed a demand-side platform for media buyers, with simpler campaign workflows across every way to buy.

    Impact

    It launched in March 2013, and an inventory estimation tool for planning buys followed that year.

  6. Reporting falls behind

    Problem

    A product review found 25 gaps in reporting, and no one owning what a publisher actually needed to see.

    Solution

    Design took on the publisher dashboards: we redesigned Sites, the Guaranteed and Unified Insights dashboards, and brand control.

    Impact

    All of it shipped by the end of the year. Our own list didn’t: the style guide, help and docs, and usage tracking were still not done.

  7. A designer in Redwood City

    Problem

    Distance was the hardest part: most of the team was in Pune, far from the customers and the product managers in California.

    Solution

    I hired our first product designer in Redwood City, to sit with product and engineering on reporting.

    Impact

    Reporting design now happened in the same room as its product manager, and it became the start of Analytics.

  8. One PubMatic

    Problem

    The publisher and media buyer products looked and worked differently, and sales still pitched from our design prototypes.

    Solution

    I set one vision, PubOne: a single, simple, smart and seamless way to buy and sell media. We took our prototypes out of sales pitches and kept them for testing with customers.

    Impact

    Each designer in Redwood City and Pune worked beside their own product manager and engineers.

  9. Ask in plain English

    Problem

    Publishers waited on account managers for their numbers, often a day late.

    Solution

    I wrote our vision for natural language: search, navigate and build reports in everyday words. With Barzer, we built it as the Smart Bar.

    Impact

    Analytics launched at Ad Revenue in October 2014, the industry’s first real-time analytics for publishers. Its engineering team grew from 2 to 12 that year.

  10. Designers in New York

    Problem

    New York was our most customer-heavy office, and design had no one there.

    Solution

    I hired a UX researcher and a UX designer in New York, close to the publishers we designed for.

    Impact

    Research moved into customers’ offices: 20 interviews with sales, pricing and inventory managers shaped the next round of Analytics.

  11. Benchmarks and alerts

    Problem

    Publishers could see their own numbers, but not how they compared, or when something went wrong.

    Solution

    Competitive benchmarking, advertiser reports and custom alerts on revenue and eCPM, designed between March and August.

    Impact

    Benchmarking shipped in Analytics Premium in May with 14 peer sets, and Analytics was back on the big screen at Ad Revenue 2015.

  12. A design system

    Problem

    Each product team built its own screens, so the same table or filter worked a different way on every page.

    Solution

    We started the PubMatic Design System: shared patterns, type, colour and components for every product.

    Impact

    Design and engineering began working from one set of parts instead of redrawing them each release.

  13. Design system and component library

    Problem

    A design system only helps once engineers can build from it.

    Solution

    We released the PubMatic Design System with a component library engineers used directly.

    Impact

    Publisher and media buyer products began moving to one look, so a publisher learned PubMatic once.

  14. TV mode

    Problem

    Ad ops teams watched revenue all day, on a dashboard built for a laptop at arm’s length.

    Solution

    TV mode: revenue, impressions and eCPM for the last twenty minutes, large enough to read across a room.

    Impact

    Live numbers on the office wall, updated minute by minute.

  15. Real time, on every screen

    Problem

    Reports were scattered across pages, and the numbers on screen were already old.

    Solution

    One consolidated reports page, a new date picker and a real-time mobile dashboard.

    Impact

    Analytics was real time on the desk, the wall and the phone. I left in September 2016.

Twelve years later

In February 2026 PubMatic launched AI Insights, where publishers ask about their market in plain-language prompts. Twelve years earlier, we shipped a search bar you could ask in plain English.