Led design effort that increased ad revenue from $100m to $350m (3.5x) on Yahoo.com; applied learnings to help generate $1.1b revenue across Yahoo.

Led design effort that increased ad revenue from $100m to $350m (3.5x) on Yahoo.com; applied learnings to help generate $1.1b revenue across Yahoo.

The big problem

One of Yahoo's most important revenue streams was at risk: Yahoo's display ad revenue declined 11% YOY.

My team's objective was to increase the display ad revenue on the News Stream, and in doing so to make the Yahoo.com homepage a highly engaging and monetized product.

User research

User research conducted by two user researchers on our team showed that Yahoo users, and users of popular search engines, consumed content in a similar way: from left to right across rows, and top to bottom down the page, in a general "F" shape:

Yahoo's display ad revenue declined 11% YOY. My team's objective: Make the Yahoo.com homepage a highly engaging and monetized product by increasing the display ad revenue on the News Stream.

User research

User research conducted by two user researchers on our team showed that Yahoo users, and users of popular search engines, consumed content in a similar way: from left to right across rows, and top to bottom down the page, in a general "F" shape:

The project team and I assessed the current usage of Yahoo.com using eye tracking software on user research participants, which generated heatmaps that gave deeper insights on Yahoo.com. I also co-created a user testing script with our project's two user researchers, which we used to test new designs of Yahoo.com.

Product strategy

I synthesized the user testing results with data analysis, plus product thinking and user experience design principles to inform my take on what the product strategy should be. Together with input from the product management and engineering team, the project's design team iterated on Yahoo.com's news stream design.

The project team and I assessed the current usage of Yahoo.com using eye tracking software on user research participants, which generated heatmaps that gave deeper insights on Yahoo.com. I also co-created a user testing script with our project's two user researchers, which we used to test new designs of Yahoo.com.

Product strategy

I synthesized the user testing results with data analysis, plus product thinking and user experience design principles to inform my take on what the product strategy should be. Together with input from the product management and engineering team, the project's design team iterated on Yahoo.com's news stream design.

Starting point

This is the design of the Yahoo.com News Stream before I took the role of the design lead for the project as the most senior designer executing the design. It was on track to help generate $100m per year in ad revenue, but I thought it could perform even better:

Starting point

This is the design of the Yahoo.com News Stream before I took the role of the design lead for the project as the most senior designer executing the design. It was on track to help generate $100m per year in ad revenue, but I thought it could perform even better:

Improving monetization 3.5x

Users preferred to see news articles that had photos associated with them, so I advised the team to give such articles a higher ranking amongst the news articles shown on the page. Many user research participants also preferred to have more control over which news articles they saw, so I proposed and designed a news personalization feature where users could see more or less of a certain kind of news article. I also designed a feature where users could hover over a news stream article and see the news article's categories, such as Celebrities and Arts & Entertainment.

These two changes, along with the addition of videos and photo galleries incorporated into the news stream, improved user engagement and monetization dramatically. We saw Yahoo's web traffic increase 5-7% per month. During my time leading the design of the project, Yahoo beat Google's web traffic in the US, becoming the #1 most popular destination on the Internet.

The homepage news stream generated $350m per year in ad revenue, a 3.5x increase over the initial $100m per year.

Improving monetization 3.5x

Users preferred to see news articles that had photos associated with them, so I advised the team to give such articles a higher ranking amongst the news articles shown on the page. Many user research participants also preferred to have more control over which news articles they saw, so I proposed and designed a news personalization feature where users could see more or less of a certain kind of news article. I also designed a feature where users could hover over a news stream article and see the news article's categories, such as Celebrities and Arts & Entertainment.

These two changes, along with the addition of videos and photo galleries incorporated into the news stream, improved user engagement and monetization dramatically. We saw Yahoo's web traffic increase 5-7% per month. During my time leading the design of the project, Yahoo beat Google's web traffic in the US, becoming the #1 most popular destination on the Internet.

The homepage news stream generated $350m per year in ad revenue, a 3.5x increase over the initial $100m per year.

Leadership on Yahoo.com design

In addition to leading the design on the Yahoo.com news stream, I also was in charge of leading the design for News, Trending Now, Growth, Social, and Alerts. I mentored designers on Navigation, Ads, and Apps. All in all, I was responsible for leading the design of the majority of the real estate on Yahoo.com.

Company-wide impact

I wanted to scale the impact of the wildly successful Yahoo.com news stream, and collaborated with other teams to share insights and help inform their product and design strategy. Ultimately, we scaled insights from the Yahoo.com news stream ad system (which was incorporated into Yahoo's ad system called Gemini) to help drive $1.1b in revenue across Yahoo's Mobile, Native, Video, and Social divisions in 2014.

Leadership on Yahoo.com design

In addition to leading the design on the Yahoo.com news stream, I also was in charge of leading the design for News, Trending Now, Growth, Social, and Alerts. I mentored designers on Navigation, Ads, and Apps. All in all, I was responsible for leading the design of the majority of the real estate on Yahoo.com.

Company-wide impact

I wanted to scale the impact of the wildly successful Yahoo.com news stream, and collaborated with other teams to share insights and help inform their product and design strategy. Ultimately, we scaled insights from the Yahoo.com news stream ad system (which was incorporated into Yahoo's ad system called Gemini) to help drive $1.1b in revenue across Yahoo's Mobile, Native, Video, and Social divisions in 2014.

Revenue

Revenue

Mobile

Mobile

Video

Video

Native

Native

Social

Social