PROJECT LENGTH
TEAM
COMPANY
Context
Project background
The current AdMob frontend infrastructure is outdated and relies on deprecated Google Ads infrastructure.
The primary navigation via sidebar and tabs is cumbersome, requiring multiple steps to reach specific pages.
The proposed change is to streamline navigation by allowing users to access all pages purely through a dynamic, multilayered sidebar, mirroring successful patterns, such as Gmail.
Problem
Features under a tab container might be harder to discover (reported by AMs)
Makes UI routing logic more complicated
Requires more mouse move / clicks when user already knows which tab they want to go
Goal
Redesign AdMob’s side nav to have a primary and secondary level, where the primary level will retain the existing nav items, and the secondary menu will replace the existing tabs.
Better use of screen real estate
Faster navigation
More extensible
Modern look and feel
Project milestones
01
Competitive analysis
Analysis helped gain an understanding of common nav patterns and best practices.
02
Research with Sales team
Validated the most common / important tasks for pubs and tested concepts.
03
Interaction design
The new nav posed a lot of nuanced interaction design questions.
01 - Competitive analysis
The tale of two nav patterns
In order to determine the correct nav pattern, I began looking at similar products both from within Google and from competitors, two main types of navigational styles emerged:
Primary and secondary nav
The first one was a pattern where the primary navigation was smaller in width, while the secondary level navigation was larger.
Nested navigation
The second pattern was a nested navigation where there was a main goal (eg. optimize) and a section was dedicated to particular job or function (eg. marketing) and pages nested in that section related to the job.
02 - Research with Sales team
I then worked with a UXR to better understand 1) what are some key tasks in the nav we should optimize and 2) concept test some ideas. Due to time constraints we didn’t get access to publishers so instead we went to product specialists.
Research goal
Understand, from Specialists’ and ATS’ perspective, the publisher workflow
Identify important and frequent tasks
Gather feedback on new menu designs
Participants
13 product specialists and ATS partners from AMS, EMEA, APAC.
Key findings:
Partners wanted to get where they wanted faster, especially for frequent and important tasks.
Partners across all regions wanted easy access points to top apps and saved reports.
Partners in EMEA expressed that only showing the icon in the collapsed main menu might confuse even the most experienced users.
03 - Design iterations and IXD
After landing on the nav pattern and understanding how best to improve the nav, the next step was stress testing the nav under various requirements and conditions.
Considerations for page responsiveness
The first thing I stress tested was the nav on different breakpoints. AdMob has existing breakpoints for large (1400 and above px), medium (1400 to 1200px) and small (1200px and below) that I worked against. The team decided for the medium size to hide the secondary level and for small size hide the entire navigation. Both of which can be accessed again by clicking on the hamburger menu.
Considerations for localization
AdMob is used worldwide and I needed to stress-test the navigation across multiple languages but particularly the longer string languages of Russian and German. To avoid differing item heights, the team decided to go with option 2.
Considerations for app picker
One of the learnings from the research, is that pubs want easy access to their apps. Therefore, I needed to consider how to retain the existing app picker while proposing way to improve the design. In the end, the larger team decided to keep the original design of having the app picker accessible through the all apps menu item.
Considerations for app centricity
Based on the UX design review feedback, key stakeholders also wanted to explore ways we can make the navigation more app-centric (ie. keep an app of interest easily accessible). I explored ways we can pin an app to the top-level. Ultimately, we decided not to pursue these explorations for now due to scope creep and instead show the last selected app in the app picker.
Soft launch
Metrics tracked
In late Q4 2025, the team launched the updated navigation through AdMob labs. We plan on tracking the CSAT in the coming months as well as the number of activations / deactivations in Labs as safeguard metrics to signal that publishers will adopt the new nav.
