OOH advertising has never had a real feedback loop. Advertisers spend budget on outdoor placements and have no reliable way to know who saw their ad, how long they looked, or whether it landed. Hadsup's AI-powered displays changed that. The cameras could analyze attention time, mood, approximate age, and gender in real time. The data existed. The challenge was building a platform that made it actionable and trustworthy enough for advertisers to buy against.
When I came on, there was no way for an advertiser to discover available ad spots, understand the audience data, book a campaign, or measure the performance. My job was to translate the founder's vision into a web platform that covered the full advertiser journey, from first visit through to post-campaign analysis.
The founder had useful prior knowledge from his time in the industry, but I wanted a direct signal from the actual users. I ran interviews with advertisers to understand their pain points firsthand, using the founder's insights as a starting ground.
Every advertiser we spoke to had the same frustration: buying OOH space is not self-serve. It involves brokers, phone calls, PDFs, Excel sheets, and a lot of back-and-forth. The expectation is that you should be able to browse, target, and book without talking to anyone (unless you need to).
Measuring OOH performance has always been inconsistent. Every media owner uses different metrics, real-time data is science fiction, and there's no standard way to compare performance across placements. Giving advertisers a single, standardized view of campaign performance was as important as the booking experience itself.
The first design decision I made was to remove the sign-up gate from the exploration phase. Advertisers should be able to browse available ad spots, use filters, and preview location analytics before being asked to register. Once they'd found spots they wanted to book, that's when we asked them to commit. This was a deliberate funnel decision.
I set a goal for myself - an advertiser should be able to go from exploring ad spots to a confirmed campaign in under 3 minutes. I simplified campaign creation into 3 steps, making it easy to select spots, upload assets with live device previews, and confirm. User testing validated the result: 3 to 5 minutes end-to-end.
The AI camera data was the platform's core differentiator but also its biggest communication challenge. Attention time, mood reactions, and demographics were metrics advertisers had never encountered in an OOH context. I designed the analytics dashboard around the decisions they'd actually need to make - which spots performed, how to compare placements, and what to adjust next time.
I delivered an atomic design system in Figma alongside a fully clickable prototype covering all flows. These artefacts served as handoff references. Also, I helped founder present the product live in investor pitches.
User testing confirmed a 3 to 5 minute end-to-end booking flow. Advertisers reported improved post-campaign decision-making as a direct result of the analytics. The MVP successfully onboarded the first paying clients, and the product secured a $700K seed round.
A few areas I'd revisit with more time:
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