AI Product Design

BlockVantage

From a website URL to a live streaming-TV campaign, with the AI doing the setup

A 0→1 product on Blockboard's engine, inventory and design system for an advertiser who has never bought media. A streaming-TV campaign is too much to set up by hand. BlockVantage earns a first-time advertiser's trust by recommending, showing why, and staying open to change.

AI Product Design · Interaction Design · AI UX

The campaign wizard, step one — a three-step stepper on the left, the AI-written read of blockvantage.com and the Device Targeting card in the center, the Daily Projections rail on the right
Step one, as the advertiser first sees it: the AI has already read the site, picked the targeting, and projected the reach, and every pick is on the table. The job from here is to approve or correct.
What's the problem?

A streaming-TV campaign has more decisions in it than a first-time advertiser expects: which audiences to build, which publishers and content to run against, which devices, which hours of which days, which parts of the country, and how to split the budget across all of it. On the platform media buyers use, each of those is its own screen.

Too much to understand, let alone to configure.

What's the scope?

A new product designed from zero on Blockboard, the platform those buyers use: same engine, same inventory, same design system, with a front door for someone who has never bought media.

  • •The on-ramp: a website and a budget open a campaign
  • •The wizard: the AI reads the site and sets up devices, geography, dayparts, content and audiences, each pick counted and correctable
  • •The summary: a read-only page, so what gets published is what was reviewed
  • •After publishing: the Performance board and the scheduled reports that show what the recommendations did
What's the challenge?

A first-time advertiser cannot check the AI's work, so the product has to earn their trust without asking for it.

How does a product earn trust it cannot ask for?

Industry background

The advertising intelligence gap.

Blockboard is a programmatic media platform — AI-powered, blockchain-backed, built around trust-verified ad delivery. The company serves mid-market agencies and brands running campaigns across streaming TV and digital channels.

BlockVantage is a product inside that ecosystem. It takes the data intelligence that powers Blockboard's ad buying and packages it as a self-service tool.

Blockboard parent brand logo

Parent brand

BlockVantage logo

The product

I created this marketing video myself, featuring an older, v1 interface.

The on-ramp

Start from a URL

A new campaign asks for three things: the brand's name, its website, and a starting budget. That is the whole form. Everything else is inferred, and everything inferred is shown.

A business with no website flips one switch and answers three questions instead. A business that people visit can add its locations from Google's listings. In every case the button at the end says what it does: Generate campaign.

The New Campaign dialog over the campaigns console — brand name, website and estimated budget fields, a No website? switch, and a Continue button
Brand name, website, starting budget. The subtitle promises the rest: BlockVantage builds your targeting from there.

The AI writes the brief

The wizard opens on a paragraph the advertiser didn't write: what the site is, who it reaches, how it makes money, and which dayparts suit it, read from the brand's own URL. It is the first thing the product asks the advertiser to trust.

The brand plate — BlockVantage, blockvantage.com, campaign name and ID on a navy header, above the AI-written read of the site
The brand read, generated from blockvantage.com. Approve it or correct it; either is faster than writing it, and either tells the advertiser the AI was listening.

Step 1 · Strategy & Planning

Approve or correct, one card at a time

Each targeting surface is a card with a headline number, a plain-language sentence under its title, and a chart showing where the number comes from. Cards that carry AI picks say how many, in a green Recommendations chip, so the advertiser can always tell what the AI chose and what it left alone. Every card can be edited, and every edit moves the projections beside it. The AI goes first; the advertiser has the last word.

Device targeting

Device Targeting card — 36 of 36 device types, 114K daily reach, a donut and bars splitting CTV 54%, Mobile 34%, Desktop 12%
36 of 36 device types. The denominator is on the card, so a later edit reads as a choice with a cost.

Geographic targeting

Geographic Targeting card — United States, 50 states plus DC, a state tile map shaded by projected reach, and callouts for All 50 states + DC and 210 DMAs
A DMA is a regional TV market, and this campaign runs in every one of them. The card defines the term in the sentence that uses it.

Daypart selection

DayPart Selection card — 127 of 168 weekly hours as seven horizontal day windows with hours beside each, plus weekly coverage 76%, longest day Friday, earliest start Friday 3 AM
127 of 168 hours, 7 recommended windows. Readable at a glance, correctable in one drag.

Networks and content

Networks & Content card — 263K daily opportunities across 6 of 16 categories with a donut and ranked bars, and a Top Publishers row of NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery
6 of 16 categories against 263K daily opportunities. Publishers are named, not counted.

Audiences, and the segment generator

Audiences card — 840K combined reach, the BlockVantage brand audience with age bands from 18 to 24 through 65 plus and a men 49% / women 51% split
Demographic bands and generated segments combine into one reach figure, each contribution still visible on its own terms.
BlockAI Audiences editor — a 4 Recommendations chip, a Recommended / User-Selected legend, a Describe your target audience field with a Create Segment button, and a Reach Similar Audiences switch
Describe your target audience, press Create Segment. Each generated segment lands as its own chip with its own remove control, and the legend keeps the model's picks apart from the advertiser's. Nothing a model made is locked in.

Steps 2 and 3

Then the money, then a read before publishing

Step two — Campaign Budget with start and end dates, total budget and target CPM, Screen Type Allocation sliders for CTV, desktop and mobile, a Retargeting switch and an Advertising Tactic select
Budget, allocation, retargeting, tactic. Each is one card with one sentence under its title.
The step-three summary hero — the BlockVantage brand plate with an Edit button, then Projections (estimated reach, opportunities and total budget), the Flight as a 31-day bar from January 15 to February 14, and Delivery settings for pacing, target CPM, retargeting and conversion tracking, above a Campaign summary · Review before publishing footer
The summary hero, step three: projections, flight and delivery settings, with Edit and nothing else. What gets published is exactly what was reviewed.

After publishing

Once it is live

Publishing is where the trust gets tested. A first-time advertiser has just let an AI spend their budget on recommendations they approved, and the only thing that keeps that comfortable is seeing what happened.

Day over Hour — Impressions card from the Performance view: a seven-day by 24-hour heatmap shaded from light to navy, light overnight and darkest from the afternoon into the evening, with a Less to More legend
When delivery landed across the week, against the seven daypart windows the AI proposed.
Top Publishers card from the Performance view: ranked bars for Hulu 1.84M, Roku Channel 1.49M, Samsung TV Plus 1.12M, Pluto TV 902K, Tubi 745K, Peacock 632K, Sling TV 498K and Vizio WatchFree+ 372K
Where the impressions ran, against the publishers and categories it picked.

Reports that come to you

Reports carry the same numbers out of the product. The report builder walks through what to include, how often it goes out and to whom, and opening a scheduled report later shows the whole arrangement on one card: what it covers, how often it runs, when it goes out next, who receives it, and the metrics inside. The advertiser does not have to learn an analytics product to know the campaign is working.

The report builder's Delivery step — Configure and Metrics checked off in the stepper, a One-time report card beside a selected Scheduled delivery card, then Frequency Weekly, Day of the week Monday, Delivery time 8:00 AM, an optional rolling date range, a Recipients field with one address added, a Delivery end date, and a Deliver to Amazon S3 switch
The report builder's Delivery step with recurring delivery selected: frequency, day, time, an optional rolling date range, recipients, an end date, and S3 if the advertiser wants it.
The scheduled report popup for BlockVantage_Delivery_Daily — a Running badge, schedule ID, category, report type, frequency Daily at 8:00 AM, next run, last delivered, recipients, and the metrics it carries as chips
A scheduled report, opened from the Scheduled Reports table: frequency, next run, recipients and the metrics it carries.

Outcomes

Building trust.

The complexity of a streaming-TV campaign did not go away. It moved into the AI's recommendations, where each one is visible, counted and correctable. That is how the product earns a first-time advertiser's trust: it recommends, it shows why, and it stays open to change, so a first campaign is a review instead of a course in media buying.

An advertiser with a website and a budget gets a fully targeted campaign to review, with every AI pick shown, the reach projected beside it, and the results reported back once it runs. The numbers that say what that is worth:

75%

faster from URL to a published campaign

How much less time it takes an advertiser who arrives with a website and a budget to publish their first campaign.

82%

of AI recommendations kept as proposed

How much of the AI's targeting survives the review unedited, which is the measure of whether the recommendations are worth trusting.

0 → 1

first advertiser to onboard themselves

Blockboard had only ever sold enterprise: sales onboarded every advertiser and a media buyer built every campaign. This is the first advertiser to onboard themselves and publish alone, and the start of the move away from that model.

← All Blockboard work