0 to 1, Legacy to Rebuilt
Optimize Budgets
Optimize Budget automatically allocates budget across campaigns and projects to maximize ROI, across platforms like Google and Meta. Used by hundreds of thousands of digital marketers, media planners, and enterprise finance teams to manage billions in ad spend.
Team
PM, Eng.
My Role
Product Designer
Duration
3 months
Tools
Figma, Figjam
Overview
Challenge
To redesign a legacy PHP tool, as over time the interface had grown dense with data, visually outdated, and lacking newer capabilities users needed as their workflows evolved. On top of that, much of the functionality that did exist wasn't discoverable or understandable within the interface.
Legacy PHP Tool ↓
Solution
Redesigned the tool from the ground up in React, restructuring the interface to surface existing functionality while adding new capabilities users needed as their workflows evolved, like smart recommendations and projections to maximize return on investment (ROI).
Research
Our research combined CS ticket data with product analytics to identify recurring patterns among users. Key findings revealed three distinct problems: users couldn't find functionality that already existed, the interface made data hard to read once they got there, and workflows had grown more complex than the tool could support.
Discoverability
24% of tickets came from users who couldn't find functionality that already existed, they weren't missing features, they just couldn't find them.
Evolving workflows
Visual clarity
Design
Created an information architecture to bring clarity to the user journey and define how new features could be accommodated within it
The tool is built as a single screen flow rather than multiple screens. It moves users from selecting budgets through optimization settings, review, and confirmation, all within one connected screen.
Selecting Budgets + Date Range
By default, all budgets in the selected account or portfolio are included. User can narrow this with Budgets Included, filtering specific budgets in or out.
Date range defaults to the current budget cycle, but user can override it to optimize against a custom window.
Budget Optimization Settings
This is where the user tells the system how to think:
Row 1, Controls
Reallocation Method — choose between two system-generated strategies: Smart Strategy or Optimize for Metric.
Hit a Target Budget — Next to the Reallocation Method, there is an optional checkbox that will ensure that the tool considers the target while showing suggestions based on the Reallocation Method.
Budget Suggestion Limits — caps how much any individual or total budget is allowed to shift, keeping suggestions within a safe range.
Lock Recently Modified Budgets — budgets touched in the last 7 days are excluded from reallocation by default, so recent manual changes aren't overwritten. User can turn this off.
Row 2, Live Data Points
Live Projections — as settings are adjusted, four live numbers update in real time: new projected spend, current projected spend, spend till now, and daily spend required to hit target, giving users a running check on where their budget stands before committing.
Row 3, Impact
Impact — once a reallocation method and limits are set, the system calculates suggestions and surfaces the overall impact before the user commits to anything.
The versions before this one
Individual Budgets
This tab shows the suggested change for every budget, one row at a time. User can review, manually edit a suggested number, or lock a budget out of the reallocation entirely — full control at the line-item level.
Summary & Media Mix Charts
This tab provides a visual representation of how the suggested budget changes will affect different platforms and channels. It includes: Platform-Level Budget Changes, Expected Impact on Key Metrics, Budget Change by Channel widgets.
The version before this one
Apply Changes
Once the user has reviewed both tabs and understood the overall impact of the suggested budget adjustments, they can apply changes. They get a final confirmation showing exactly how many budgets will be impacted by applying the changes.
The Shipped Product 🎉 ↓
This is the version I shipped. I still think it needs enhancement, and here is what I would change with more time.
Top three structural improvements would make the screen easier to use:
Single screen to multi screen flow: I would split the experience across screens so settings, live numbers, and impact each get room. This reduces cognitive load and shows the most important data first.
Date Range repositioning: I would move it to the far left, right before the “Budgets Included” pill, and style it to match. Lining up the first details a user checks follows natural scanning patterns.
Apply Changes hierarchy: I would lift this primary CTA just above the main tool content so it stays contextual but visually separate. Users review first, then push updates to Google Ads, so this gives a clear, sequential flow.
Outcomes
Became one of the platform's most heavily used tools, reaching 100K+ users.
Users applied over 191,000 budget optimizations between October 2025 and August 2026.
159K+ of those were auto-applied, showing that once the feature became discoverable, users trusted it enough to let it run automatically.
That trust translated into a 137% usage surge in one quarter, with engagement climbing from $8K to $19K.
