After graduation from the University of Washington, I joined Instagram Business Experience, Core Monetization Team as a product design individual contributor, unblocking monetization opportunities cross surfaces like profiles and IG Stories.
We have seen success launching ad experience on Profile Feed. Therefore, in 2023, I continued the work to unblock monetization opportunities for Instagram Reels on profile.
Cross-functional collaboration, idea generation, prototyping.
Co-led the profile ads big bets workshop and generated 2 major directions for future ads placement opportunities on Instagram, including premium ad placement and grid placement on IG profile.
Closely worked with PM and UXR to run moderated user testing to validate the big bets opportunities.
Worked with cross functional team members to pitch the idea of putting ads on profile reels after a successful launch of Profile Feed ads.
Prototyped the ad placement experience and integrated it into Reels chain on profiles.
Closely worked with the content designer to integrate the ad experience into the the existing revenue share program onboarding flow.
Closely worked with front end developers to integrate Reels ad placement into Meta Business Suite (Ads Manager).
Although we did not proceed with any big bets ideas mentioned, the team achieved code-complete milestone for profile reels ads placement in December 2023.
Reels ad placement on profile was successfully launched to 100% advertisers in June 2024, with +0.3% ad impression and 0.05% billing based revenue.
See final products here.
Reach more people: Profile ads are additional opportunities to reach and connect with profile owners' audiences.
Increase brand awareness: Advertisers can improve brand awareness and conversion by exposing more of their ads to people who actively explore content on IG profiles.
For content creators: Ads on profile allow eligible partners to earn revenue and create a financial incentive.
The profile is place for users to discover products/brands from people they trust.
In order to generate some early representative ideas, me and my design partner organized the design workshop and invited designers from Instagram creator ads team and profile team.
I co-led this 5-hour sprint with my design partner and generated 3 major directional representative ideas.
In order to validate whether our brainstormed ideas are truly people needs. I closely collaborated with UXR to run moderated user testing sessions with advertisers, profile owners and IG users.
I would like to skip the lengthy research insights from UX researcher's work stream. Here are some key insights.
Advertisers thumbed up all three ideas but concerning about the "Sponsored placement" and collaboration with the profile owner, especially for owners who share content regarding advertisers' competitors.
Profile owners feels slightly concerned about users would think the ads associate with the profile owner themselves. Overall, they have negative incentives regarding directly showing ads when browsers open up their profiles.
Users feels negative overall for placing ads on non-professional accounts because they feel invasive on a personal, non-commercial space. However, they would like the ads to be contextual to the theme and content of the profile for professional accounts.
Combining user research insights, we come up with a few design principles to evaluate these highly praised ideas.
Non-intrusiveness: Ads should not interrupt or overly dominate the profile experience.
Low advertiser risk: Ensures that ads placed on profile are displayed in a brand-appropriate environment, which is free from inappropriate profiles that could negatively impact the advertisers' reputation
Minimal tech effort: Reuse of existing design system and pattern, ensuring our product is viable with low implementation risks.
Thanks to my design partner's hard work on profile feed ads, the product was tested with success and launched in H1 2023.
We accumulated $6.84M incremental revenue at the end of 2023.
In H2 2023, we would like to expanding the profile ads monetization to the reels chain of the profile, which is a growing surface that represents $120M–$200M iRev opportunity.
We will monetize all public non-teen profiles, which is the same as we did for profile feed ads discussed above.
The ads should be shown within reels on the profile but not in the profile reels grid. The design of the ads should match with the Reels ads design.
From the previous user research we learned that users are concerning whether the presented ads are associate with the account owner or not. We connected with the legal team and aligned on having a disclaimer where users can learn such information.
At this stage, I closely worked with the Content Designer to integrate content into the existing onboarding flow and made sure users are aware of that profile ads now include placement in both feed and Reels.
I also led the placement integration into the Ads Manager.
With the success of internal alpha test and rolling out to 100% advertisers, we are considering some future profile ads strategy by closely monitoring the ad impression and conversion.
Implement personalization to tailor ads based on user preference, behaviors, or profile context as this was suggested in the past UXR recommendations.
Feedback loop: Considering designing mechanism for users to rate or provide feedback on ads to improve contextuality.
Allow profile owners to have options to opt in/out of the placement
Create monetization dashboard for profile owners to monitor their profile views and incentives