IIT Guwahati Case Study Challenge 2021

Case Background:

Rahul is learning to cook. He uses YouTube to find dishes that he wants to prepare and then
follows them step-by-step. He uses his phone to watch these YouTube videos, on the chrome
web browser. Rahul prefers to watch the video while cooking, pausing at times when the dish
needs some time to cook. At these times he often sees a different video, or reads some tips, or
makes some notes, or chats with his friends. When he returns, 1 of 2 things happen -
1. Either he has to reload the video sometimes and an ad starts playing, OR
2. An ad just starts playing because it was a long pause

But this is a bad experience for Rahul because he is in the middle of cooking, and being new at
it, is nervous that he might be making some mistake while cooking the dish. It is especially
jarring when non-skippable ads come up.

Problem Statement:
Assuming that you are a PM in YouTube, your task is to :-
● Design a simple feature which allows a user to disable ads for some time, 1. either at a cost,
or 2. by filling some surveys, or 3. seeing more ads in the future.
● Analyse all the 3 options, providing pros and cons of each, and recommend one with
clear reasoning. You can also suggest any other feasible option with reasoning.
● Please create a Product Requirement Document (PRD) (Sample template) which covers the
designing process of this feature
● You can only use 2 places to design various aspects of this feature - (a) the video page
itself and (b) a separate settings page
● Please create wireframes explaining the complete user experience to be read by both
Business and Tech teams

Judging criteria :-
● Design and wireframing
● Rationale for choosing a particular Product strategy
● Structure and comprehensiveness of the PRD
● Aligning the right metrics
● Covering all points of the the problem statement

Please submit in a PDF format only (in not more than 10 pages)
 - Improvements in Ads Consumption using Coin Economy

Submission by -
Team Product MUZE
Ayush Soni | Jayesh Wajurkar | Mayank Bharti | Shikhar Mahajan | Sumit Kr Pal
 User Journey & Solution Pros Cons
- User research ecosystem - Low Motivation to fill long surveys
Anxiety Meter - Lowest Anxiety Triggers - Additional effort in Development
- New Feeder to User relevance - Deviation from Video (Snack-ability)
- Deviation from Video only feed - Low accuracy in survey filling
Survey Based Ads Skip
- Experimentation room for Survey - Survey filling is a High effort task
Low Ex. Let’s say 30 min - Low instances count for Survey nudge
- Minimal User experience Hit

Idea: Pre/Post watch Ads for Uninterrupted content Stream

Pros Cons
- Slightly improved consumption - Very High effort to watch Ads in a go
- High Ads watch time & Impressions - Visible monetization effort from YT
- Limited Anxiety Spikes - High Drop offs due to low motivation
Front or Post Load Ads - Never can this be a Recurring event
Video Initiation - Video Resume - Video Transition - Halt - Non relevant ads feeding at odd time

Idea: Easen UX and Ads/Survey Feeding using Virtual Coins

Pros Cons
Ads Introduction - Coin credit - User Gratification - Added Eng/ design Effort
- Ads/ Survey consumption : Gamified effort - Cannibalization of Premium user
- Positive sentiment towards Platform - Adding an Additional Route
- Added medium to engage users (Increasing user steps)
Gamification - Maneuver User with Gimmicks: Low Drop
Coin Economy - Create in-house economy - Creator+User

Drop offs Idea: Buy Premium for ad free experience

User Anxiety Low Engagement Dormant users
Pros Cons
Ads in between videos result increased User anxiety and probable - High Anxiety user will go for Premium - YT only loyals to be on Paid
chances of drop-offs, which is Bad CX for YT. How to improve or - Ability to Afford the experience (Loyal) - Need optimal balance between
transition this in least anxiety prone routes. HIGH - Easily converted whenever nudged Paid Users vs Ads watchers
- Post Purchase : Good user experience - Recurring payments/
Segmenting the Users into High to Low anxiety attributed to Ads Paid Subscription - Post Purchase: Seamless Viewing options Reminders nudges to user
 Proposals User Experience Anxiety Level Reach - Effort Engagement Revenue Potential User Base

Suited for Low Anxious Suited for Cohort

Affects UX if YT is dependant users, Can be used to nudge - Mid engineering Effort 1. User Cohort 1
on Surveys -- High effort 1 out of 10 instances to 2. User Cohort 2
- Low User reach
task, might lead to User shift to premium or Ads skip Type
drops -- Improper Survey - Low demand of Know/Hows Low Anxious
filling, random clicks - Low revenue Capabilities Intent to wait
Survey Based Ads Skip Low Low High
Ex. Let’s say 30 min

Not a long term Solve, Lead to Peaks of aggravated Suited for Cohort
Recurring of this feature will anxiousness in the user, can - High engineering Effort - 1. User Cohort 1
create User anxiety be tipping point to shift to Pipeline ads 2. User Cohort 2
Paid mode
Peaks of these user - Low User reach Type
behaviour will highlight the - Irrelevant Ads feeding Low to Medium Anxious
Low
Ads based monetization - Over time drops Medium Intent to wait
High
Front or Post Load Ads angle

Best user experience, but Suited for user who skips Already Exists, Can be Suited for Cohort
conversion to paid user is Ads, or have high end tweaked as Subscriber level 1. UC 6
the effort, Smoothening that sessions attributed to Ads Pack buying or Video count 2. UC 5
inducing in between wide top up pack.
process is the just the need Type
or nudging the ones which Medium to HIgh Anxious
have anxiety/ it takes a lot
High User intellect - User Medium
Effort High - Development Intent to wait
Premium at a Cost effort to watch ads low
Pre Purchase Eng. is Medium Medium Low

Creating motivation Coin Low Anxiety, as the tasks or Suited for all Cohort
economy that supports users games can a mix of surveys -
- High Effort Building
to watch ads with Ads or even questionnaire Type
gratification, and even the which help them with a Low to Medium Anxious
- User reach Maximum &
liked creators over and above seamless watch experience Intent to wait
basic like medium. Helps YT across various Persona’s
High
to drive the required User without much hampering YT High
behaviour with motivation premium experience Fruitful & Scope for Exp. High
Gamification based Tasks
Coin Economy
Gamification based Coin Economy for YT

How to earn the YT coins? How to redeem the YT coins?

1. Complete Ads 2. Sign up for High rev ads (High CTR) 1. Ad free experience - Earned coin can let you can watch video for Ad free (Earn to Redeem ratio - 1/5)
3. Fill Surveys 4. YT driven gamification to drive CX 2. Buy YT premium for partial Coins and reduced price, Acquisition ensuring YT premium isn’t devalued

How is User experience Improved? How Youtube is benefited?

User Gratification: Improved CX & User engagement - More Instances to interact with the Platform
Ads & Survey consumption is instantly credited with a earning
Gamified and Effortless Consumption of Non-Content (i.e. Ads- Surveys- Signups)
Gamified & Smooth Non-content Consumption:
Fruitful Ads Consumption- High Usage & Low Paying users Perfect Blend of Ads Consumption + Premium Subscription
Higher Ad finish rate, Watch Frequency & Survey filling Process Develop Optimal User Behaviour for Long term platform Stickiness
Improved & Controlled CX Subscribe Creators - Maturing Notification & Home Page relevance
Easy Redemption
Feature Exploration & Profile Completion Tasks
Single toggle ensures Ads free experience & Redemption process
Empowered Revenue Stream : Higher Ads Watch frequency & Finish rates
Support Creator via Coin Donation:
Additional User Love signals, Identification of great quality content YT Coin Donation support
Identification of great content creators providing platform goodness
Post Redemption : Video Relevance Feeder
- Easy access to YT premium (Experiential Pack)
- Ads free consumption for Ads consumed Parallel merchandize page
Can be used by YT and Content creators to list their Merchandise
User Driven consumption
 ProduScope - Team Product Muze
Product Brief (Problem):
YouTube, with daily increasing content & users, is being run on an Ads revenue model. Ads consumption
population over several videos help YouTube earn the relevant revenue. Still, there can be instances where
these Ads can lead to User anxiety & Drops off due to a Bad Experience (i.e. Bad user experience due to
Ads introduction after a break/ pause/ Interruption/ Halt).

Dissecting the YT user base to understand the - Persona level experiences

User usage Behavior

(Anxiety levels Low to High ∝ User Happiness High to Low)

Anxiety level - Low Anxiety level - Mid Anxiety level - High
User Happiness - High User Happiness - Mid User Happiness - Low

If ads play, the user is not aware

If ads play, the user is aware Neutral since he doesn't have an
since he has an appetite for Indifferent or Can manage to appetite for watching ads and
watching ads & has time to watch ads or Skips after a while has limited time to spare!
spare!

Action: Continues to manage the Ad Sometimes watch or drops Drops off or close the app

Ads Appetite High Indifferent Low

Intent to Wait High Indifferent Low

Ability to Pay (Low) User Cohort 1 User Cohort 2 User Cohort 3

Ability to Pay (High)

User Cohort 4 User Cohort 5 User Cohort 6

**We are targeting the user cohorts as the shades of green depicts the priority the product solves the
problem.
**Ability to pay is gauged by Premium buy instances **Ads appetite using the

Solution Brief (Coin Economy)

We are designing a Coin economy for YouTube which will function on non-content consumption
transactions:
- Earning End: User will earn the YT coins via :
- Consuming ads - Filling surveys
- Feature exploration
- Spending End: Redeem the coins for Ads free period/ Subsided Premium pack with auto deductions
of earned coins
- Settings page Introduction - Ads-free toggle Button,
- Support Pages - YT wallet (Highlighting the Coins earned)
Goal
1. Enhancing the Ads consumption experience with minimal Fatigue or exertion
2. Improving UX by categorised personas with empowering the current revenue stream.
3. Increase User Engagement & Decrease User drop off instances

Non-Goal
1. Try to move users from third-party browsers to the app.
2. Fruitful Ads conversions - Increasing Finish rates & Ad watch frequency Per user
3. Potential parallel revenue stream or empowering the current one
4. Extra User love signals intent for the Content creators - Advertisers etc.

Milestones
1. Launch the Coin economy for the Alpha User Cohort 3 & 2 - Who have never purchased the
premium packs & skips ads as soon the button appears (Indicative)
2. Scale it to the Beta user test groups of cohorts 1,2,3 & 4 based on the Feedback from the A-
testing in the first phase
3. Soft launch on these cohorts listed above with A/B testing - 5% split
4. Complete Launch Seeing the responses, we should introduce them to the other Blanket cohorts
for a full running

KPI’s
Category Metric Definition

User Engagement % of coins used to watch ad-free. In a specific user segment, # of coin redeemed/# of coin
earned

User Engagement % of users viewed full ads to earn coin In a specific user segment, # of full ad view/# of ad views

User Engagement % of people using the ad-free mode In a specific segment, # of users turned on ad-free/total users

User Engagement % of people doing tasks to earn coin In a specific user segment, # of tasks done/# of impressions

User Engagement % increase in Ad consumption % of ads watched just to earn coins(user skips the video)

Traffic MAU of the feature Monthly Active feature Users

Traffic Retention rate % of people disables ad-free after turning on and consumption

Traffic Churn rate % of users didn’t turn off the ad-free after first use(leading to
auto-turnoff due to balance)

User Satisfaction NPS score, CSAT score -

Revenue % change in revenue from ads ((Earned revenue/Expected revenue without coin economy)-
1)*100

Revenue % boost in premium subscription due to ((Earned revenue from the premium subscription/Expected
coin usage revenue)-1)*100
Functional Requirements
Phase 1
Coin/ Wallet Discoverability
1. Coin & Wallet visibility and proper nudges for awareness - Video page & Settings
a. Earnings Flow & Instances - Ads/Surveys
b. Spending Flow & Instances - Ads-Free experience Toggle Button
2. Routing to page Highlighting when clicked on Wallet
a. Carousel How can you earn coins & spend coins?
b. FAQs at the bottom of the Wallet page
3. Transactions spend & summary after coin consumption post the Ads-free screen time
4. Video watch history should highlight coins consumed against the watched video. If any?
5. Coin Transaction Ledger - Basic timestamp of Credit & Debit to be Highlighted

Reminding Mechanism
1. As soon the user completes the Ads or Survey - Coin credit should be shown for initial onboarding
2. As soon the Ads free toggle button is clicked, Coin count should decrease as per the consumption
3. Coin replenishment when the wallet has fewer coins to sustain (ex. 10 Ads-free video time)

Coin assigning Algorithm

1. High revenue or valuation Ads to assigned coins as per the relevance
2. Optimizing the Ads to ensure Highest revenue/Low Anxiety ads get higher screen-time

Fallback Process
1. No Provision of recharging the coin wallet, if you want an ads-free experience go to Premium
2. Optimal routes to return from all the pages,
a. Wallet to Homepage/Settings/Video page - When it is clicked
b. Modification for Ads/ Survey filling to highlight the coin economy

Phase 2
Creator Support - Donation Process :
1. Designing the Creator support flow to Promote Hidden gems/ Extraordinary creator with coins
2. Creator community to promote cross-creator challenges

YT Behavior Enhancement gimmicks :

1. Ensuring User follows Creator they like - Follower maturity
2. New Gimmicks to ensure optimal Adoption

Key discussions & Open Questions

● What will be the effect of cannibalization percentage from current YT Premium users?
○ YT premium subscription repurchase % movement
○ Ad-monetization from churn users vs YT premium charge: Which provides more goodness?
● What will be the impact of the Coin economy on current content consumption?
○ The shift from Content consumption to Ads consumption - Analysis of trend
● App break-down problems - How will be these issues managed? - Halt/Breakage etc.
Wireframes and User Flows
How to earn YT coins?

Here we are crediting the YT coins whenever

users complete activities designed around the
coins earning gimmicks. These coins will be a
credit to the user's wallet and can be later
redeemed for a better user experience and
some in-kind monetary benefits

How can the user earn the YT coins?

Method 1:
Complete Ads/ Rate ads

Method 2:
Sign up for High rev ads (High CTR)

Complete long ads or don’t skip ads, Will credit

some valued coins.

Ensuring that the high effort tasks, leading to

Customer fatigue, are awarded instant
rewards in YT coins.

Method 3:
Fill Surveys

Similarly, Fill in the survey and earn coins.

Without gamification, this would seem like a
high effort task. Might lead to adoption or
proper survey filling practices

Method 4: YT driven gamification to drive CX

 - Feature Exploration
- Testing Expedition or Rating Videos
- Developing user behavior for Optimal
Usage

Overall, All these efforts result in an optimal

engagement behavior with the self-sustaining
coin economy without losing on revenue or
User

- Low anxiety consumption of non-

content
- Higher finish rates for ads/Surveys
- Higher CTR’s
- More Revenue effective leads

What will be done with the YT coins?

There are two ways from which we can utilize these
YT coins that our users have earned.

Ads Free experience

Users can go on the Profile page, use the toggle

button and turn on the Ad-free experience. Post
which, the user will be made aware that the coins
are getting deducted for every occasion.

Thought-line: The coin redemption ratio will be 1 to

5 approx. If I watch a total of five videos with ads, I
can see one video ad-free!

Youtube premium with YT coins

Users can access the profile page, buy the YouTube

premium page, & buy the YouTube premium with
earned YT coins partially. For ex- Single Users can
buy a monthly pack for 49+200 YT coins, as shown.
Ensuring the Premium subscription isn’t devalued &
Customer acquisition or experience is coming at a
cost instead of free acquisition.
1. Involved user experience & Fruitful
Consumption
2. Perfect Blend of YT premium & Ad watchers
3. Revenue stream more matured
4. Effortless consumption and users earn ads
free Youtube time.
Additionally, Users can support the good creators
with YT donations - Support. Identification of
talent/hidden gems for overall platform goodness
Launch Checklist & Go-to-market
Checklist
● Dissecting the User Cohort, TG in ranges of 25-40%
● TG is positively responding to market intent around the Idea
● Optimal User flow design plan & Support Page creation
● Dummy Wallet with 50 dollar credits to walk through the Ad-free experience
● We start with a one-month-long campaign
● Ex. For Indian Geography - Around Diwali (as a gifting gesture)
Prerequisites
● Milestone 1 - 15 days observation period for Alpha testing (Cohort level)
● Soft launch Plan - If the response in the test groups is 7-8% better Engagement without
hampering/improved Ads revenue - GTG (5% TG User base)
● Milestone 2 - Scale to complete platform with guardrails to prevent User churn & Directional
Scale up
GTM
● Awareness:
● Proper Education of User
● Design awareness nudges & notification campaign
● Education: Feature Update In-app & Browser flow, ensuring max. reach of users
● Position: Proper Positioning/Rethinking of Wallet discovery - Seeing the response
● Utilization & Adoption: Feature utilization vs Customer Happiness
● Low Drop-offs - Higher Engagement - Lower Dormancy movement
● Fallback Procedure for the over cannibalization of Premium users