CUSTOMER PROFILE
ux research, user interviews, CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
company overview
AppNexus is an adtech company operating a cloud-based software platform that enables programmatic online advertising. It has both demand-side platform (DSP) and sell-side platform (SSP) functionalities.
roles & responsibilities
As a UX Designer on the Customer Experience team at AppNexus, it was my responsibility to gain a deeper understanding of our users. While in South Africa, I visited the offices of one of our foundation clients.
the challenge
Our foundation clients used our product daily, but did not have the support of a dedicated account manager. Foundation clients depend on our knowledge base, webinars and customer support, so I conducted user research to understand their issues.
Company Snapshot
• In operation since 2009
• Was the first buyer seat in Africa
• Services ad agencies throughout Africa
• Employs 20 people
• Started as a programmatic agency
CUSTOMERS
• Offers client services, programmatic, strategy
• Most business comes from Johannesburg
• Is an Independent Trading Desk for Omnicom Group
• 3 Main Client Segments: Omnicom Group, PHD Media, and Distell (liquor)
• Services brands including McDonald’s, Shoprite Holdings, Checkers, Standard Bank, Levis, PHD
TEAMS
• 1 Managing Director; 1 Team Lead for each client segment
• Young office—most are in their 20s or 30s
• Takes about 2-3 months to fully onboard an employee without prior experience to successfully run a campaign from start to finish.
• Team Leads create IOs and Campaign Managers set up, launch, and optimize the campaigns.
DAILY ROUTINE
• Office operates between 8:30-5:30pm SAST (6 hours ahead of New York)
• Morning checklist: Check previous day’s stats, pull seller reports, conversion reports
• Daily challenges include: pulling reports is a manual process; their clients constantly want things changed; NYC time difference—webinars often start when they are ending work for the day, but they’ll stay late to attend them.
EXPERIENCE WITH APPNEXUs console
“AppNexus forms the backbone of the company. AppNexus allows us to build our own marketplace.”
Being the first AppNexus seat in Africa “makes a big difference in a market where everyone has a Google login.”
AppNexus has given them advantage in the Performance space. “It's been great have Certified Supply—looking forward to more stuff like that.”
EXPERIENCE WITH APPNEXUS SUPPORT TOOLS
“We love support tickets—AppNexus gets back to us within 24 hours, and are more than happy to help.”
When issues arise, the AppNexus Wiki is the first place they’ll go for solutions.
“Everyone Sits through every webinar—this is best way to train staff. We’re big fans of webinars—they’re an essential part of our training. It's really great to be able to visualize it.”
CUSTOMER PRIORITIES
• Quality and transparency in inventory: “Sellers need to be moderated in terms of inventory. There’s a big problem with sellers and click fraud. It's the biggest thing that AppNexus needs to do, to ensure that inventory is certified.”
Ensuring that they get best results for their client. “Console is a user-friendly, easy to use system but complex enough to get results.”
From my research findings, I created the below profile of the foundation client as a snapshot of the customer for both my UX team and AppNexus to consider when creating help tools for our user.
