Ads monetization & event engine
Ad inventory was priced by clicks, not value, and events were one-off scrambles. I re-priced the inventory and built the repeatable machine behind it — and doubled ads revenue.
The result
One star, two systems
The problem
Revenue left on the table
- Click-based ad pricing. Inventory was sold by clicks, not by the value of the impression — so premium placements were underpriced.
- No unit economics. There was no model for what a banner position was actually worth, or how many slots a campaign needed.
- Events as one-off scrambles. Each sale started from scratch — no repeatable playbook, BAU and events run on separate calendars.
What I built
Two systems
1 · Impression-based monetization
Price the inventory by what it's worth.
- Impression pricing model — daily benchmarks per banner with event multipliers; derived cost-per-impression, impressions-per-slot, revenue-per-slot.
- Slot allocation logic — given a target number of impressions, calculate slots needed and check availability.
- 4-tier sponsorship packages — a structured revenue product, Bronze to Platinum, ₹50K–₹1.2L, across push, WhatsApp, in-app and brand-day.
Artifact · sponsorship tiers
Bronze
₹50K
Push + in-app placement
Silver
₹75K
+ WhatsApp blast
Gold
₹1L
+ pre-sale & sale-day slots
Platinum
₹1.2L
+ brand-day exclusive
2 · The event engine
Make events repeatable, not heroic.
- Integrated daily ops calendar — BAU running every day as the baseline, with event overlays on top.
- 4–5 complete event cycles in 5 months — planning, configuration, execution and QA for each, across 180+ brands and multiple regions.
- Promotion governance — cart discount architecture, cohort/region targeting, QA controls for clean execution at scale.
The outcome
Ads revenue, doubled
- Star — ads revenue +100% QoQ, from the pricing shift plus the structured package menu.
- Event lever — storefront CTR 0.7% → 1.5%, merchandised GMV 2% → 4% of total.
- A product, not ad-hoc — the sponsorship deck became a self-serve revenue product sellers chose tiers from.
The judgment call: I moved sellers off familiar click-pricing to impression-pricing — a harder sell short-term — because it priced the inventory honestly and unlocked the tiered product. Short-term friction for a structurally bigger revenue line.