PubMatic Ad Platform
- Role
- Design Manager2012–2016
- Team
- Hands-on manager of a global team of 8 designers and researchers in Pune, Redwood City and New York, with 4 PMs and 200+ engineers.
- Outcome
- Grew customer adoption 900%, from 6% to ~60% of customers logging in. Reduced reporting time from hours to real time, with predictive analytics and ad tech’s first NLP search. Moved the platform from managed to self-serve, reducing account management hiring. Built PubMatic’s first design system. Twice named PubMatic’s Star of the Quarter.
PubMatic is the sell-side platform (SSP) publishers use to sell their ad space. I joined in 2012 and reshaped the product on both sides of programmatic: the publisher SSP, and a DSP for media buyers. The biggest piece was PubMatic Analytics.
Reporting hadn’t changed since it launched in 2007: numbers split across reports, reachable through account managers and often hours late. I bet that publishers should get their own numbers, in real time, by asking in plain English.
PubMatic Analytics
Hours late to real time
The revenue dashboard I designed for every publisher on PubMatic Analytics.
Context
Reporting hadn’t changed since it launched in 2007, and the numbers were often hours late, split across reports and reachable only through account managers. When we surveyed every user, 64% found the product slow and barely bearable, and 37% didn’t know help existed.
Decision
One screen for the numbers a publisher lives by: revenue, eCPM and paid impressions, with alerts the moment a KPI rose or fell. Each publisher laid it out their way, and it stayed that way when they came back.
Impact
- ~60%
- of customers logging in, up from 6%
- Real time
- reporting, from hours late
Smart Bar
Ask in plain English
Type “show revenue” into the Smart Bar and the answer appears. I wrote the vision, and we built it with Barzer, a small startup, rather than wait for a big vendor. Ad tech’s first, and we filed a patent.
Report builder
Build your own report
A designer on my team led the report builder: pick the metrics and dimensions, filter, chart and save. One report instead of six, without waiting on an account manager.
What it became
Asking in plain English came back
In February 2026 PubMatic launched AI Insights, where publishers ask about their market in plain-language prompts. Eleven years earlier, we shipped a search bar you could ask in plain English.