Pub+: campaign spend and revenue on one screen, with a brand of its own

Rotem Elimelech (Rotem E) designed Pub+ as a freelance UX and product designer from 2017 to 2020, and art-directed its brand.

Pub+ is a revenue-attribution platform for content publishers who run paid traffic campaigns on Facebook and other sources: it ties every campaign’s spend to the advertising revenue it brings, so a publisher sees which campaigns profit and which lose, hour by hour.

When Rotem joined, Pub+ was an early prototype; he designed the product around it, the campaign dashboard with its live metrics, the campaign environment with hourly, per-creative and per-page performance, the notes, alerts and reports beside the table, the create-campaign wizard, the design system, the knowledge center and the sign-in, and brought in illustration designers to redesign the brand under his direction.

Everything shown in the Pub+ case study shipped to publishers while he was there.

Today Rotem is a freelance product designer (UX/UI) in Tel Aviv, Israel. Pub+ is the analytics and dashboard part of his record: one person responsible for the UX and UI, and for the brand, of a product where every number drives a decision the same hour. This page tells that story in text; the case study shows the screens.

View the Pub+ case study · About Rotem · Discuss a project

Relevant experience for your project

• Analytics dashboards and data-heavy tables. A campaign table with visits, CPC, RPM, ROI, revenue and more per row, for media buyers who compare dozens of campaigns at once.
• Revenue attribution and campaign management. Spend from the traffic sources and revenue from the ad servers joined per campaign, with a wizard to create campaigns across sources and creative variations.
• Decision support beside the data. Team notes, smart alerts and generated reports in side panels next to the campaign, not in a separate area.
• Charts for comparison. Hourly performance, ROI by creative and exit rate by page, opened from the campaign without leaving the environment.
• Design systems for dense products. Filter panel states for tags, dates and more, designed once as a system sheet.
• Brand and illustration for a B2B product. A flat graphic language with characters, art-directed by Rotem and drawn by illustrators he brought in, across the product, the knowledge center and the sign-in.

Pub+ at a glance

What Rotem found, and what he built

When Rotem joined in 2017, Pub+ was an early prototype. Publishers running paid campaigns had their spend in the traffic sources, Facebook and the rest, each with its own dashboard and metrics, and their revenue in the ad servers; nobody saw the profit of a campaign in one place, and the picture changed every hour.

By 2020 the product was whole. A web dashboard managing revenue campaigns across sources, with visits, CPC, RPM, ROI, revenue and extended metrics per campaign. A campaign environment with an hourly performance chart, performance by creative with an ROI bar chart, and performance by page with an exit-rate chart. Side panels for team notes, smart alerts flagging campaign traffic, and generated reports with their status. A create-campaign wizard that selects traffic sources and steps through creative variations. A design system sheet of filter panel states. A brand identity with a flat graphic language and characters, a knowledge center with illustrated article cards, and a sign-in page with Google login beside a photo of the team.

Rotem’s role

Rotem owned the UX and UI of the product and worked with a product manager who shared the UX, managed the product and ran the tasks. He was also the art director of the brand: he brought in illustration designers to redesign it, and directed the graphic language and the characters they drew. Three sources fed the product definition: the product manager’s knowledge of publishers and paid traffic; sessions with the media buyers who run the campaigns all day; and what the early prototype’s users did and asked for.

The problem, and the constraints

Two problems, one product. Campaign spend lived in the ad networks and revenue in the ad servers, so nobody saw profit per campaign. And there were too many sources, Facebook and the others, each with its own dashboard and its own metrics.

Two constraints shaped the design. The metrics are dense and belong on one screen: visits, CPC, RPM, ROI, revenue and exit rate, per campaign, per creative and per page, side by side. And the data is live and hourly, changing during the day and driving decisions the same hour.

Product decisions

Three decisions Rotem made and would defend today. The campaign table as the operational center of the product was the product manager’s call, and the three below are built around it.

1. Notes, alerts and reports beside the table, not elsewhere

The decision: team notes, smart alerts and generated reports live in side panels next to the campaign table, opened without leaving it.

Why: an alert about a campaign’s traffic, a colleague’s note on it and the report generated from it belong to the campaign, and the decision they feed is taken at the table. The strongest alternative was alerts as a separate inbox, with notes and reports in their own areas: cleaner to build, and every alert would have sent the buyer away from the row it was about.

Tradeoff: side panels take width from a table that is already wide. Each panel opens on demand and lists its items compactly, so the table stays the center of the screen.

Shown in the case study: Side panels, Main hub.

2. Drill down without leaving the environment

The decision: hourly performance, performance by creative with ROI, and performance by page with exit rate open from the campaign, inside the same analytics environment.

Why: ROI, CPC, RPM, fraud and creative or page performance are not reporting data; they drive immediate decisions, so analysis and action had to live on one screen. A media buyer moving between a campaign and its creatives should never lose the row they came from.

Tradeoff: more charts and levels inside one environment. One chart pattern, bars with a hover detail, repeats at every level, so the second drill-down is already familiar.

Shown in the case study: Campaign environment, Main hub.

3. A brand with characters for an analytics product

The decision: a flat graphic language with illustrated characters, art-directed by Rotem and drawn by the illustrators he brought in, used in the product, the knowledge center and the sign-in page.

Why: a dashboard of numbers is easy to make cold. Characters and a warm language give the product a voice in the places that are not the table: the knowledge center, empty states, the sign-in, the brand.

Tradeoff: illustration must stay out of the way of the data. The characters live around the table, never on it.

Shown in the case study: Branding, Knowledge center, the brand illustration.

What shipped, and what it did

Everything in the case study shipped to publishers while Rotem was on the project. This page documents the design work; no measured outcome is published here.

The facts on this page come from Rotem’s own account, the Pub+ case study and his career timeline. The figures inside the interface screenshots are demo content, not results.

Frequently asked questions

What did Rotem Elimelech design for Pub+?

The UX and UI of the platform from an early prototype: the campaign dashboard with its live metrics, the campaign environment with hourly, per-creative and per-page performance, the notes, alerts and reports side panels, the create-campaign wizard, the design system, the knowledge center and the sign-in, as a freelance UX and product designer from 2017 to 2020; and the brand, as its art director, with illustrators he brought in.

Is this case relevant to an analytics dashboard, a BI tool or a media buying product?

Yes. Pub+ is a revenue-attribution and campaign analytics dashboard for media buyers: dense live metrics per campaign, comparison across traffic sources, drill-down to creatives and pages, and alerts and reports beside the data.

Did Rotem design the brand and the illustrations himself?

He art-directed the brand and brought in illustration designers who drew the graphic language and the characters under his direction; the product’s UX and UI, the design system, the knowledge center and the sign-in page are his design.

Is Rotem available to design a similar dashboard or analytics product?

Yes, as a freelance product designer, on a retainer or for a defined project: a data-heavy dashboard, a campaign or reporting tool, a design system for a dense product, or the full product from research to UI and brand. Availability and rates are on his profile.

Work with Rotem

For a team building an analytics dashboard, a revenue or campaign tool, a BI product or any software where people decide from many live numbers, Rotem brings the whole product process, research, product definition, UX, branding and UI design, and the experience of turning a prototype into a product media buyers work in all day. Availability, rates and how he works are on his profile.

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