Improving Carousell’s Ads experience

Improving native ad products and designing tools to help sellers succeed on the platform.

Overview

As the Lead Product Designer for monetization at Carousell, Southeast Asia’s largest mobile classifieds platform, I led a series of high-impact projects that transformed our native ad products and significantly boosted revenue.

My role involved end-to-end leadership across UX strategy, design, testing, and implementation.

Please note, Carousell underwent a brand refresh as the projects were in progress, so there may different color schemes between existing and proposed designs.

Goals

• Improve discoverability, usability and effectiveness of Carousell’s ad products.
• Identify opportunities of monetization
• Retain sellers and advertisers on platform

Key initiatives

1. Bump Scheduler

Making our ad product more user friendly

A bump brings listing to the top of the marketplace. After which, it will behave like a normal listing and be moved down as new listings are added.

Problem

Sellers were confused by the three similar bump options. The tool lacked flexibility, allowing bumps only on three consecutive days. Sellers had to manually renew every three days, leading to lost sales opportunities and revenue loss for both sellers and Carousell.

Solution

• Simplified choices: Merged the bump types into a single product, making selection easier.
• Flexible scheduling: Allowed sellers to choose specific days, frequency, and schedule bumps up to two months in advance

Original issue and proposed concept. Bump scheduler makes the 3 different types of bumps redundant.

Proposed design

Impact

• 20% increase in revenue: Higher adoption due to the simplified and flexible options.
• Improved user experience: Sellers gained greater control and ease in managing their promotions, leading to increased satisfaction

2. Profile promote

Reviving an underperforming ad product about to be sunset

Profile promote is an ad tool that displays a group of listing thumbnails on search, and lead buyers to the sellers profile instead of individual listing. Profile promotion was an abandoned product.

Problem

• Low Awareness: Only visible to sellers with at least five active listings, limiting its reach.
• Revenue Loss: Excluded potential advertisers with fewer listings.
• Poor Performance: Sellers saw limited engagement and often discontinued use.

Solution

• Enhanced visuals: Redesigned with larger, more engaging thumbnails to attract more buyer interactions.
• Lowered entry barriers: Reduced the minimum listings requirement from five to two, broadening accessibility.
• Extended campaign durations: Allowed campaigns to run for longer periods, increasing convenience and improving engagement rates.

Campaign set up redesign

Impact

• Increased engagement: Boosted chats, likes, follows, and profile visits.
• Higher adoption: More sellers used the product, driving ad revenue growth.
• Sustained revenue: Transformed Profile Promote into a key revenue stream

3. Spotlights

Improving customer experience — not making them wait to get a refund

Spotlight is a promotion tool designed to increase the visibility of listings on the Carousell marketplace by pinning across search results. Spotlight last for the set duration and users are charged per click.

Problem

Previously, users were charged upfront for Spotlight ads. If the purchased clicks were not delivered, Carousell had to refund almost 95% of the fees, leading to blocked funds and frustration for both the sellers and the platform. Sellers were unable to utilize their budget effectively for other campaigns due to these locked funds.

We had to refund almost 95% of the fees charged!

Solution

I introduced a pay-as-you-go model, where users are charged only after their ads receive clicks. To maintain sufficient funds for ongoing promotions, sellers are encouraged to keep a minimum balance in their wallets:

• Pause and top-up: When the wallet runs out of coins, the Spotlight campaign is paused, and sellers are prompted to top up, preventing any need for refunds.
• Increased ad pool: More spotlights meant a larger pool of ads to display the most relevant ads in the spotlight slots in search results, which increased the click through rates.

Spotlights post paid

Impact

• Eliminated refunds: No longer needing to refund unused funds, reducing operational overhead.
• Flexible budget use: Sellers can now allocate their ad spend more effectively, using their funds across multiple campaigns.

4. Improving ad performance

Creating ad formats that attract more attention

Problem

Some sellers were hesitant to invest in Carousell ads due to concerns about their effectiveness, often stemming from past experiences. Current ad formats are limited by:

• Lack of engagement: Ads rely primarily on impressions to generate clicks, providing limited opportunity for interaction.
• Restricted ad real estate: The existing half-column square image format is often too small to effectively showcase products.
• Cut-off text: Sellers’ captions or titles are frequently truncated, reducing their ability to communicate key messages.

How current ad formats on Carousell look

Solution

Full-width ads

• Introduced ads that use 100% row width, providing space for larger images or multiple visuals, breaking up the monotony of square listings and increasing visual impact.

Full width ad

Interactive ad formats

• Designed gamified ad options that allow sellers to offer deals or promotions directly through ads, making them more engaging and increasing user interaction.

Impact

• Higher Engagement: New formats will attract more attention, increasing click-through rates and overall ad effectiveness.
• Increased seller confidence: By providing richer, more interactive ad options, sellers will feel more confident in investing in Carousell’s ad products.
• Boosted daily active Users (DAU): Engaging ad experiences will encourage users to spend more time on the platform, benefiting both ads and regular listings.

5. Information architecture

Making a scalable structure to include more ad formats and manage campaigns

In the existing IA, the number ads are in an unorganized list, which overwhelmed users. This discouraged product team from adding more ad products. If a campaign was ongoing, the controls happened on the same screen, which did not provide the best experience.

Existing IA, seller tools.

I proposed new information architecture where ads are listed in categories, and also created a monetization opportunity by creating an ads category for members of CarouBiz subscription only.

Future improvements

• Develop an Ads Manager Dashboard for B2C merchants: bulk management, chat tools, analytics, and role-based controls.
• Simplify listing insights for better usability and engagement.
• Introduce infinite campaigns and scheduling for ads to enhance convenience and revenue potential.

Through a series of strategic initiatives, I led the transformation of Carousell’s ad experience, driving measurable improvements in both user engagement and revenue growth. By focusing on simplifying ad products, introducing innovative formats, and enhancing platform usability, I helped Carousell retain sellers, attract new advertisers, and solidify its position as a leader in the C2C marketplace.