Unicast Ad Kit - building a v 1.0 creative production tool
I was originally re-recruited to work for Unicast because of my experience with Flash programming as well as UX/UI design. The leading digital ad companies at the time offered custom tools to build their own ads, and Unicast wanted to build a creative toolset like this. Flash was the primary tool used to build ads at the time and was extensible by third-parties.
I designed and led the development of the Unicast Ad Kit, even stepping in to lead the development team working on the code when the development team manager left the company.
This tool was used internally, and it was also a selling point for major publishers, who signed multi-million dollar all-in deals for ad serving, the ad kit and our production and campaign management services. AOL for one was an enthusiastic adopter of the Unicast Ad Kit, and used it for the better part of 10 years.
PRODUCT MANAGEMENT
PRODUCT DESIGN
USER RESEARCH
MANAGEMENT
SALES ENGINEERING
DEVELOPMENT
The Unicast Ad Kit was fully integrated into the Flash authoring workflow, using Adobe's extensible panel infrastructure.
A set of included ad templates provided a starting point for development of any supported ad format. Templates could be managed by a knowledgeable developer, allowing publishers to create their own template libraries.
The Ad Kit supported a high degree of complexity and customization, supporting the ability to load assets into multiple web panels (for units like expandables), inter-ad communication, variable management for dynamic ad units and more.
Pre-built feature components were included to support commonly needed functionality as a drag and drop addition.
The Ad Kit also included a full API and set of documentation, which was carefully designed to mimic the appearance and conventions of native Flash documentation as much as possible, to maximize ease-of-use for new developers.