Smart Pricing for Ad Inventory

Prior to this project, ad pricing was entirely manual—employees managed rates in spreadsheets, and the development team had to push every price change.

I led the creation of the Pricing Tool from scratch, enabling the pricing team to manage and update rates themselves. This introduced more pricing variety and allowed for customized or loyalty-based discounts.

Ad Tech Internal Tool

Timeline

5 months

Impact

The tool cut CPM adjustment timelines from weeks to minutes, allowing the pricing team to respond to market opportunities in real time. It removed their reliance on engineering resources, freed up agile capacity for product development, and introduced flexible pricing options that better served our growing mix of small businesses, enterprises, and agency clients.

*AI images used for illustrative purposes only.

Why One-Size-Fits-All Pricing Failed

Hulu Ad Manager (now Disney Campaign Manager) launched in March 2020, enabling advertisers to create and manage their own campaigns. Initially, the platform operated on a single fixed rate card with one CPM (Cost per 1,000 impressions), meaning all campaigns were charged identically, with only occasional manual adjustments for seasonality or inventory change.

This single-rate structure created missed revenue opportunities:

  • No premium pricing for advanced targeting (geography, demographics, interests)
  • No ability to offer promotional rates for new or returning advertisers
  • No flexible pricing adjustments for seasonal demand
Inventory Needle
The inventory panel shows the CPM and available inventory for the ad campaign.

The pricing team also lacked platform tools to manage rates effectively. They relied on external spreadsheets to track advertiser-specific CPMs:

Spreadsheet Example
Example of how the pricing team tracked rate cards in spreadsheets. Advertiser names and CPM amount have been blurred out.

If they wanted to update the CPM, they had to submit an engineering request which could take weeks to update in the platform.

CPM Updates
CPM updates required engineering tickets, creating delays for the pricing team.

Smarter Rate Card Management

"Pricing Manager" had lived in the backlog for years, a proposed tool to enable the pricing team to create and manage multiple rate cards independently. In late 2022, resources became available to prioritize it. The objective: eliminate manual CPM updates to reduce engineering dependency and automate key pricing workflows.

MVP requirements for launch:

  • Flexible rate cards: Enable start/end dates and premium pricing add-ons for each card
  • Rate card classification: Support different pricing models (e.g., political advertising)
  • Prioritization logic: Allow higher-priority cards to override lower-priority ones
  • Advertiser group management: Create reusable groups (agencies, repeat customers, new advertisers) that can be assigned to rate cards in bulk, eliminating need to add advertisers one-by-one to ratecards

Designing Under a Tight Clock

This fast-moving project served a specialized user base with compressed timelines, late 2022 start to early 2024 launch, leaving limited time for extensive discovery.

Through pricing team interviews, I mapped their existing workflows and identified critical pain points: manual spreadsheet-based rate tracking and engineering dependency for all CPM updates.

Adjacent Tool Analysis

Competitive analysis proved impractical for this internal tool as I couldn't access competitors' proprietary pricing platforms. I could look at other internal tools we ad in our ad suite and found:

  • A deal package management tool with comparable advertiser workflows
  • An existing linear TV rate card system (legacy, not streaming-optimized)

These provided valuable patterns and UX flows even though their functionality differed.

I was able to use the legacy rate card tool and the advertising packages tool as a starting off point to making the new pricing tool.

Initial Design Explorations

Drawing from pricing team insights and internal tool patterns, I began exploring initial concepts. Early explorations focused on core layout decisions: how users would view rate cards, edit them, and configure advertiser groups.

Early designs focused on layout of rate card editing and setting up advertiser groups.

Iteration in Real Time

As with most internal tools, I iterated continuously based on direct user feedback. Given the tight timeline, formal user testing wasn't feasible, but I met regularly with the pricing team to review screens and walk through rough Figma prototypes.

The final rate card interface uses a table view with an expandable side panel for detailed information and editing.

Users can select rate card from table and view/edit details and pricing.

Advertiser group management mirrors the rate card structure, using the same table-and-side-panel layout.

View advertiser group members and their assigned rate cards.

Bringing the Tool to Life

Impact & Outcomes

The pricing tool launched in early 2023, eliminating engineering dependencies for CPM updates and replacing manual spreadsheet workflows. The pricing team can now manage advertiser rate cards significantly faster, enabling more competitive pricing and tailored deals for advertisers.

Speed to Market

The tool reduced CPM adjustments from weeks to minutes, enabling the team to capitalize on market opportunities instantly.

Eliminated Engineering Dependence

It eliminated their dependence on engineering resources, freed up agency bandwidth, and facilitated more competitive pricing and customized deals for advertisers.

The tool has evolved incrementally post-launch such as having a new feature called publisher-level targeting to specify if the ad airs on Disney+, Hulu or both.

Competing priorities have limited my continued involvement with this tool, but despite the tight deadline, I found it rewarding to build something from the ground up that meaningfully improved teammates' daily workflows.

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