Flipkart Ads Product Sense: Improving the Payoff Retailers See From Ad Spend

You are a product manager at Flipkart. Build a product for retailers whose goal is to raise the return on investment that advertisers get from their ad spend. ```hint Pin down whose return Work out whether the retailers and the advertisers are the same people, and what "return" should mean to them. Revenue credited to an ad and the profit the ad actually added can lead to very different products. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Are the retailers the marketplace sellers who pay to promote their own listings, or a separate group whose product should make other advertisers' campaigns pay off? - Which ad formats are in scope: sponsored listings in search and browse results, display banners, or both? - Should return be judged as revenue credited to ads per unit of spend, or as incremental profit after margins and after sales that would have happened without the ad? - Is the priority small sellers trying ads for the first time, or large brands and agencies with dedicated ad teams? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A working definition of advertiser return, and why it matters to Flipkart as well as to retailers, including the tension with short-term ad revenue. - Retailer segments by advertising maturity, and a justified choice of which segment to serve first. - The root causes of wasted ad spend (listing quality, product selection, targeting, bidding and budgets, measurement) tied to specific product features. - A prioritized feature set with a clear first release. - Success metrics with guardrails for shoppers, sellers who do not advertise, and Flipkart's ad revenue, plus the main risks. ### Follow-up Questions - After launch, many sellers' bids drop and Flipkart's ad revenue dips for a month. How do you decide whether to keep the product? - How would you show a seller which of their sales the ads actually caused? - What changes in the product during a large sale event, when traffic and competition for ad slots spike?