*AI images used for illustrative purposes only.
Background
Launched in March 2020 as Hulu Ad Manager, Disney Campaign Manager introduced Hulu's first self-serve advertising platform. The platform enabled advertisers to create and manage their campaigns with full control over targeting parameters (age, location, interests), campaign duration, budget allocation, and video ad uploads.
The platform was developed to achieve two key goals:
- Easier access for SMBs (Small, Medium Businesses): By setting a $500 minimum spend threshold, the platform significantly lowered the barrier to entry for SMBs looking to advertise on Hulu.
- More ad diversity and localization: Enable a broader range of advertisers to deliver more varied and locally relevant content to Hulu's audience.
The original platform was designed with simplicity in mind, offering a straightforward campaign setup flow (see video below).
The Case for a Redesign
The platform performed well in its first two years, driving SMB acquisition and solid profitability. However, we faced two significant challenges:
- Unsustainable vendor costs: Ongoing reliance on our launch partner agency was cutting into margins as the platform grew
- Market gap: The platform excelled for SMBs but failed to meet the sophisticated needs of agency advertisers
Agencies represent a strategic priority for several key reasons:
- Higher revenue potential: Agencies generate significantly more revenue than SMBs
- Evolving business priorities: Company objectives were shifting to better align with agency user needs
- Competitive parity: The platform needed to match the capabilities offered through our direct sales channel and competitor platforms
- Market dominance: Agencies account for the majority of ad buys in the streaming landscape
Agency users are more sophisticated than SMB advertisers and demand advanced platform capabilities, diverse ad formats, granular targeting options, and enterprise-level features that our original platform couldn't deliver. Capturing this market required a complete platform overhaul: migrating to internal teams and ad servers, and fundamentally redesigning the campaign workflow.
Design Approach & Constraints
How I Worked
This wasn't a simple design refresh — we were rebuilding the entire platform while keeping it live for existing customers. Beyond reimagining the campaign flow, I designed new reporting and creative upload experiences from scratch.
Key constraints that shaped how I worked:
- Sole designer across the entire platform, supporting multiple PMs and engineering teams simultaneously
- No freeze period — the live product needed ongoing updates and bug fixes throughout the rebuild
- Ukraine-based engineering partners across a 10-hour time difference, requiring async-first documentation and tighter handoff specs than usual
- Hard launch deadline of Fall 2024, which meant design decisions had to be confident and well-reasoned — there was limited room to revisit core flows
The Core Design Problem: Line Items
Before designing the new flow, I needed to address agencies' most critical requirement: line items. Line items function as sub-campaigns within a parent campaign, each containing its own targeting parameters, flight dates, and creative assets. A single campaign can house multiple line items, allowing advertisers to test different strategies simultaneously — a standard feature across competitor platforms (sometimes called "ad groups" or "ad sets") that agency users expect.
Our existing platform didn't support this structure. Users could only launch one campaign with a single set of targeting, one video ad, and one date range.
The core challenge became: how do I design an interface that elegantly presents multiple line items, each with its own complex configuration, within a single campaign creation flow?
Exploring the Navigation Pattern
Competitive analysis pointed clearly toward a single-page flow — it was the only pattern that could support multiple line items without creating a confusing multi-step wizard. A former designer had explored this direction, and existing user research confirmed the preference. That gave me confidence to build on it rather than start from scratch, and focus my energy on the harder problem: how to display multiple line items without the navigation becoming unmanageable.
Initial explorations centered on how to effectively display multiple line items in the navigation interface.
The top tab layout worked for two or three line items but broke down quickly beyond that — tabs would wrap or truncate, and there was no clear way to add more. I moved to side navigation patterns, which gave each line item a dedicated row and made the hierarchy between campaign and line item much clearer.
After testing several side nav patterns with stakeholders — particularly those working directly with agency advertisers — I landed on an accordion approach. It solved the scalability problem while keeping the campaign-level context always visible. Users could collapse line items they weren't actively editing and expand the one they needed, reducing cognitive load without hiding anything.
Agency-Tier Features
With the navigation pattern resolved, I turned to the features agencies expected but our platform didn't have. Each one required its own scoping — understanding what the feature needed to do, what other platforms did, and what was technically feasible given our infrastructure migration.
I added a "Delivery" section to consolidate ad scheduling and distribution controls: dayparting (when ads run), pacing (how budget is spent), and frequency caps (how often users see ads). These settings previously didn't exist at all — agencies were making do without them or not using the platform.
I designed a new VAST (Video Ad Serving Template) upload flow within the Ad section. VAST tags allow multiple creative assets within a single ad unit, addressing a recurring agency request.
Final Design
The final flow unified line item navigation, delivery controls, and VAST upload into a single-page experience. Below is a walkthrough of the complete campaign creation process.
User Testing
Testing Without a Research Team
With a non-negotiable Fall 2024 launch date, I completed all designs by summer and used the remaining time for user testing. I scoped testing deliberately: given the constraints, I focused exclusively on the campaign creation flow — the platform's most significant redesign and the highest-risk area for usability issues.
Without a dedicated research team, I owned the full process: writing the test plan, recruiting participants, and securing contractor budget to help facilitate sessions. The locked timeline meant findings would primarily inform post-launch iterations rather than pre-launch changes — a trade-off I documented clearly so the team knew what to expect.
Test Methodology
Research Objectives
- Evaluate whether the new campaign creation flow improves the user experience
- Assess ease of understanding and overall usability
Who We Tested With
- 10 individuals with experience running online ad campaigns
Session Format
- 1-hour moderated usability sessions
How Users Navigated Line Items
Users appreciated the single-page flow for setting up line item details, but 66% of them struggled to locate the "New Line Item" button when prompted, it wasn't immediately discoverable.
"I just found this whole process just very smooth and clear"
"This was really clean, easy, and way better than Meta"
Budget vs. Impressions Confusion
There was confusion around how impressions were estimated, particularly within the custom pacing settings. Some users expressed concern about how their campaign budget would impact impression delivery.
"If the ad was doing well…am I going to burn through my budget sooner?"
"How are we arriving at the 28,000 impressions for a $1,000 budget?"
Terminology Confusion
The term "Line Item" confused some users. Even those familiar with the concept typically encountered it as "flights" or "ad groups" on other platforms.
UI Tone & Brand Expression
While most of them were able to navigate easily. a couple users commented on the UI feeling "too simple" or "quite plain" and noting it lacked personality.
Post-Launch
The redesigned campaign creation flow launched in October 2024. Technical bugs surfaced at launch — expected given the scale of the migration — but my QA process had caught most usability issues and UI inconsistencies before they reached users. The "New Line Item" discoverability fix from user testing shipped within weeks of launch.
Notable new capabilities included cross-platform targeting, allowing advertisers to run campaigns on Disney+, Hulu, or both simultaneously. Following the platform's rebrand to Disney Campaign Manager, the interface received a full visual refresh. We've maintained an ongoing feedback loop with advertisers and internal stakeholders since.
Outcome
Agencies finally had the features they'd been requesting. The platform internalization eliminated third-party costs and gave the team full control over the roadmap.
Reflection
The biggest challenge on this project wasn't the design complexity — it was making confident decisions without the usual safety net of a research team, dedicated QA, or a freeze period. I learned to be more intentional about scoping: testing fewer things thoroughly rather than everything shallowly. If I were doing it again, I'd push harder to get agency users involved earlier in the process, even informally, rather than waiting until a formal test plan was in place. The insights from our post-launch feedback loop confirmed most of what we suspected — earlier validation would have let us ship a more polished v1.
What This Project Taught Me
This project presented considerable challenges: serving as the sole designer, conducting research without a dedicated UX team, coordinating with overseas developers across time zones, and balancing multiple concurrent responsibilities. Despite these constraints, leading the design of this core experience from concept to launch (and contributing meaningfully to the platform's growth) was immensely rewarding.