The legacy TRF model had too many disparate systems with different methodologies, an unattractive dashboard, and a user experience that had no way to scale.

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Viewership fragmentation, unreliable data, and campaign inefficiencies don't provide advertisers enough insight into deduplicated reach across their inventory. Samba TV's legacy reach and frequency tool needed to be updated to support more scale. This meant strengthening the tech stack to support more measurement studies, reducing internal runtimes, and streamlining internal processes. With Targeting Accuracy, Samba TV also needed to build parity for reach & frequency measurement as compared to other competitive products. Before TRF, viewership fragmentation was a common issue for advertisers because viewers consume content across different platforms and devices with no true way of measuring outcomes. Subpar data and tools lead to inaccurate targeting and measurement which leads to overspending on ads that reach people outside target audiences, or oversaturate audiences with the same ad.

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The problems of True Reach & Frequency 1.0 include:

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• Disparate internal systems with different methodologies
  

• Reports that run up to 8 hours (and then fail)
  

• Pre-computed dashboards that were unattractive and offered no customization

• Limited metrics and performance narratives
  

• Research Managers supporting a fixed number of studies - no way to scale

The measurement product team at Samba TV came up with an 8-month plan to update and improve the current TRF system from a technology and user-experience perspective.

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Included in this update was a new interactive dashboard design, on-the-fly filtering, simplified report set ups, flexible delivery methods, faster processing, easier troubleshooting, and refreshed methodology. The new product also includes new KPIs (On Target %, On Target Penetration) which focus on Targeting Accuracy, supporting Samba TV's vision of offering measurement against Advanced Audiences.

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The benefits of True Reach and Frequency 2.0 include:

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• Frequency Optimization:
  Omniscreen frequency insights help optimize campaigns by pinpointing where ad exposure efficiency declines

• Omniscreen Measurement
  Understand which types of devices (TV, phone, tablet, PC), TV networks, or digital publishers your campaigns are performing best

• Incremental Reach
  Access omniscreen reach insights, such as digital and CTV incremental reach over linear TV-only campaigns

• Granular Insights
  Filter down for advanced insights such as demographic (gender, ethnicity, age, income), or level of TV exposure (heavy viewers, cord-cutters, etc)

When a major client is interested in a product and revenue is at stake, it doesn't matter how many days into the job you are - you just have to drop everything and execute.

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I was briefed on this project on my second day at Samba TV and immediately dove into it head first. Being the only product designer at the company, I didn't have anyone else to fall back on and needed to prove that I was capable of tackling this on my own. I started by reading all of the documentation associated with this project and fortunately, my amazing product manager had already completed market research, personas, competitive analyses, and other user research needs prior to my hiring at Samba TV. This allowed me to conceptualize and start designing wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes pretty early on in the process - which was good because we had a fairly tight deadline to meet.

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I met with my product manager, engineering leaders, and internal users every week to ensure that my designs met their needs and would be able to get implemented. In parallel, I worked with front-end engineers on creating a unified design system that allowed us to have a more efficient hand-off process. Six months after I started working at Samba TV, the MVP version of TRF launched, which was a massive achievement and was met with extremely positive feedback. We were able to spend a few more months to conduct thorough a/b testing, add new features, update any design flaws, and incorporate user feedback before launching the GTM version in February of 2023.

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The product lifecycle is ever-evolving and we are constantly looking for more ways to improve it, but overall the experience and the feedback I obtained from this project has been incredible and has helped me grow as a product designers in so many ways.