One ad format, every commercial vertical
A new search ad format that scaled from real estate to cars to jobs.
Role:
Interaction Designer
Team:
1 PM, 3 ENG, 1 UXR, 1 DS & 1 VP
Timeline:
~1 year
The problem
Commercial verticals like real estate had low query growth, because listings lacked high-quality information (images, prices, locations) and the rental experience was hard to use. There was no scalable ad format that served these verticals well.
The tension
The proposed ad placement inside filtered lists risked confusing ads with organic results. The challenge was surfacing ads clearly without degrading search quality or user trust.
The hardest decision
I flagged the ad-versus-organic confusion risk and designed an alternative that preserved search quality while clearly surfacing ads. I used wireframes to make the revised approach legible to the team, then built the vertical framework with the PM.
The system
A vertical ad framework that plugged into commercial queries and scaled across Search, Maps, and YouTube.
Impact
Stakeholder confidence in the framework drove its adoption across all commercial search verticals, scaling to Search, Maps, and YouTube.
What I'd change today
I'd pull engineering and the vertical partners into the framing stage, not after the concept, to lock tradeoffs before they became rework.