Could a technographics platform make sense of AdTech's big data?
Our venture creative initiative set out to transform billions of signals transmitted across the open web into actionable analytics.
CASE STUDY / INDUSTRY INDEXServices
Venture Creative
Business + Digital Strategy
Branding + Brand Management
Visual Identity Design
Data Visualization
Digital Experience Design
Audience + Market Research
Product Design + Management
Engagement Strategy
The mission: build a technographics platform that decodes billions of daily digital advertising and marketing data signals, revealing how advertising technology is actually being used (and often abused). With these smarter insights, all sides of the ecosystem could make smarter decisions.
Industry Index was early-stage, and its needs many. Rather than taking them on as a client, we dived into the data lake together as venture creative partners.
PROOF OF CONCEPT: INITIAL PRODUCT DESIGN + DATA MAPPINGWe took a seedling idea and designed multiple technology and communication solutions to address potential customer needs. This included product and data mapping, user need prioritization, and information architecture.
With three distinct audience types, the flow of data-driven content was crucial. A series of visualization techniques helped us uncover the integrations between products and the segmentations necessary to address audience clusters.
Applied Services
Brand + Digital Strategy
Market Entry Consultancy
Product Conceptualization
Audience Identification + Alignment
DESIGNING A VISUAL IDENTITYOur approach was to design a visual identity that was unique and flexible, while unobtrusive. The resulting system punctuated Industry Index’s purpose, and let the data do the talking.
The color system stands apart from the many AdTech industry tropes. It’s friendly, vibrant, purposeful, and instantly recognizable. The iconography nests neatly underneath the parent brand. The digital wayfinding icons of the technographics data platform are light and pictographic, driving attention to, rather than competing with, the gobs of AdTech marks displayed in the data sets.
Applied Services
Visual Identity Design
Brand Guidelines
Iconography Library
Illustration Style
Digital Standards for UI Library
PRODUCT DESIGNThe Industry Index product required a UX/UI for a SaaS product that digs through more than 5 million top Comscore sites on a frequent basis. This data demonstrated where Mar/AdTech company offerings were firing, to whom they were leaking data and customer lists, and where they were off on standards compliance.
Millions of data points were displayed for multiple points of view, organized by at least three distinct user types, and offered a high level of statistical detail. Integrations included both eCommerce and a fully integrated CRM.
Applied Services
Product Design
Information Architecture
Informational Hierarchies
UX/UI
Information Design
Agile Prototyping
WRAP UPIndustry Index never did gain the foothold we had hoped. While our clients found our technographic data dazzling, and many took advantage of our outstanding research and white paper services, more continued to maintain a hands-off approach to AdTech data leakage and arbitrage of their inventory. Industry Index shuttered for good before the global pandemic began.
There are many silver linings. Paramount to all is the experience gained from the other side of the table. Engaging in a product-based tech startup, working through pivots in product and getting product-market fit only partially correct, and fighting through the VC process proved invaluable. The wisdom in our ranks, and our truly empathetic approach to our startup-phase clients, offset the losses many times over.
- Matthew Thornton, Founding Partner and EVP, Industry index
Additional credit: Armchair and Mark Ramel for work shown in this case study.