Ad automation at scale

Context

MKR was born as an internal innovation initiative at Blink.la to explore a new business vertical focused on automating Display Ads at scale.

The goal was to design a system capable of generating large volumes of assets while maintaining visual consistency, content flexibility, and creative control, while at the same time reducing the operational burden of manual production.

As Product Designer, I was responsible for the project's discovery, the product design, and the presentations, working alongside the Head of Design and the development team.

The problem

Manual Production

Campaigns required hundreds of variants (sizes, languages, CTAs) that were produced one by one, consuming weeks of low-creative-value operational work.

Market Rigidity

Many existing solutions were closed SaaS platforms or expensive services, inflexible, customized workflows.

Lack of Consistency

As productions scaled, visual errors, inconsistencies, and review times increased.

The process

• Research into market tools and capabilities.
• Identification of product opportunities and features.
• Prioritization and backlog definition with the development team.
• Design of workflows and editing flows.
• Design of the main production and editing interface.
• Definition and maintenance of the component library.
• Design of features oriented toward automation and bulk editing

Research & prioritization

Competitors analyzed during the research stage

Benchmark

I researched tools and market platforms with similar proposals to identify different approaches, patterns, opportunities, and limitations. I mapped and prioritized the main features of each solution.

Technical definitions

Together with the team, we explored different technical approaches (from static assets and animations in After Effects/Lottie to HTML solutions with animations in CSS and JavaScript). From a product and UX perspective, I analyzed how these decisions affected editing flexibility, workflows, and the system's scalability.

Templates and design workflows

I analyzed template structures and variable logic to ensure visual consistency, content flexibility, and scalability in asset generation.

Progress status of the tool’s main features.

HTML ads are a better fit for the market the business is targeting

Design Challenges

Initial definitions

I worked with the development team on the initial definitions of the data model, the logic for editing properties, the layout, and the platform's overall architecture. The challenge was to define the simplest way to incorporate the core functionality to meet the MVP timeline.

Design workflow

I defined which design aspects could be taken as variables from a template and established the workflow for proper integration between the designs in Figma and MKR, later facilitating their editing and scalability.

Scalable editing

The mass generation of assets had to maintain consistency and flexibility. I designed automation workflows where Collections allowed cascading changes to variables to automatically generate multiple banners. I also designed the CSV import proposal to scale ad generation.

Animations

Animation editing had to integrate simply. I worked with the development team on property editing using GSAP, a JavaScript library for HTML animations. I designed a panel that organized sequences into steps, similar to that used in presentation or slide tools.

Integrated AI

I researched and prioritized, together with the development team, AI tools to incorporate into the platform. Different integrations were evaluated to speed up production and prototyping workflows.

The canvas groups pieces by orientation, following the bulk-editing logic

Properties are grouped and can be edited one piece at a time or across all pieces at once

Pieces can be created in bulk by importing a CSV or linking the project to an online spreadsheet.

Export supports different formats and runs in the background

Results

• MKR simplifies the production process.
• A single template generates multiple variants while maintaining consistency.
• Production time is significantly reduced.