Coast Technology
Dealerships plan and launch streaming TV campaigns themselves, in a guided wizard
Drive OTT, which we built for Coast Technology, lets dealerships set up streaming TV and digital billboard campaigns in four guided stages with a live preview. Validation keeps dependent choices consistent, and each dealership sees only its own campaigns.
Automotive & DealershipsSelf-serve ad campaign portalModernized a live product
The challenge
Coast Technology's advertising system needed back end knowledge and long documentation, so dealers and other advertisers could not run campaigns on their own.
What we did
A guided campaign wizard in four stages with validation and a live preview, then a dealership layer with scoped roles, and a second brand on the same code.
The outcome
A self-serve portal for streaming and billboard campaigns, moved to live for both brands, where each dealership sees only its own campaigns.
- Channels
- Streaming apps and sites, digital billboards
- Wizard
- Campaign type, strategies, optimize, finalize
- Users
- Super admin, dealers and agents per dealership
- Brands
- Two branded instances on one code base
The starting point
Coast Technology is a U.S. software company whose products serve auto and RV dealerships, among other industries. Drive OTT is its portal for planning, configuring and reporting on streaming TV and digital out of home ad campaigns.
What had to change
The existing advertising system needed in depth back end knowledge and extensive documentation, so advertisers could not run campaigns on their own. Coast Technology needed a self-serve portal that kept the depth of the old system.
What could not break
- Built to the client's brand guidelines and requirement document
- Dependent choices such as dates, deals and audiences must stay valid together
- Each dealership sees only its own campaigns
- The same code serves a second brand, on its own infrastructure
The calls we made
We framed it as turning many interdependent settings into a guided path a dealer can finish without help, and only then adding organization structure.
- 01
Design before the build
Flows, site architecture and low and high fidelity designs in Figma, drawn from the client's requirement document and brand guidelines, settled the wizard before development, and an early design audit checked them.
- 02
Four stages, one choice at a time
Choose a campaign type, choose up to three audience strategies, optimize and finalize. Optimize breaks into flight dates, deals, apps and sites, geography, dayparts, devices, frequency and CPM, with a floating panel that previews the whole campaign.
Ruled outKeeping the old setup, which needed back end knowledge and long documentation.
- 03
Rules that keep choices valid
Validation blocks negative inputs and dates out of order, and allows either a custom audience or third party data, never both, so dependent choices stay valid together.
- 04
Core flow first, roles second
Once the wizard worked, we added a super admin, dealership records, and dealer and agent users tied to a dealership, with every campaign tagged by dealership so each user sees only their own.
- 05
One code base for two brands
The second brand runs the same portal code on its own infrastructure, with its own local, staging and live environments, and changes move to live for both.
How the system fits together
What we built
Campaign wizard
Four guided stages: campaign type (new or used cars, dealership branding, service, buy back, parts, recruitment or custom), audience strategies, optimize and finalize, with each campaign published or saved as a draft.
Audience strategies and creatives
Dealers pick up to three audience strategies, such as their own CRM or DMS list, a conquest data list or an in-market list, upload a custom audience or choose third party data, never both, and select or upload commercials.
A preview of the whole campaign
A floating panel shows every setting of the campaign before it is published, and it was extended to show each field added later.
Dealership layer
A super admin manages dealerships and their dealer and agent users, every campaign is tagged with its dealership, and the super admin reads reports dealer by dealer, with email notifications over SMTP.
Second branded instance
The same portal runs for a second brand on its own infrastructure, with separate local, staging and live environments for each brand.
How it works
Choose
The dealer picks a campaign type, such as new cars, used cars, service, parts or recruitment.
Choose strategies
They pick up to three audience strategies, from their own CRM or DMS list to in-market lists.
Optimize
They set flight dates, deals, apps and sites, geography, dayparts, devices, frequency and CPM, one step at a time.
Finalize and preview
They add an audience file or third party data and commercials, check the floating preview, then publish or save a draft.
Report
Reports show each campaign, and the super admin sees them dealership by dealership.
A closer look
What changed
Coast Technology got a self-serve portal in place of a system only experts could run, with dealership roles and a second brand on the same code. Both brands moved to the live server after our QA rounds and a client feedback round.
Under the hood
- Datics role
- Product built by Datics
- Platform
- WordPress with custom post types and Advanced Custom Fields for campaigns, dealerships and users, and a jQuery multi-select plugin.
- Access
- Super admin, dealer and agent roles, with each campaign authored by a user and tagged with a dealership, and dealer-wise reports for the super admin.
- Validation
- No negative inputs, no dates out of order and one audience source per campaign, either a custom upload or third party data.
- Deployment
- Hosted instances for both brands, each with separate local, staging and live environments, and SMTP for email notifications.
Also in the stack
How it shipped
Requirements and design
We started from the client's requirement document and brand guidelines, with flows, site architecture and low and high fidelity designs in Figma.
Core portal
Login, registration, the campaign wizard, assets, commercials, preview and reports were built, with an early design audit and QA rounds on validation and on phone and tablet widths.
Dealerships and a second brand
We added the super admin, dealership records, dealer and agent users and dealer-wise reports, stood up the second branded instance and ran a client feedback round.
Hardening and go-live
A parent theme, a preview with every new field, a duplicate draft fix, published campaign visibility for dealers and reconfigured SMTP email came before the move to the live server and testing.
Design reviewed before code
Figma flows and designs were drawn from the client requirement document and brand guidelines and audited early, so the build followed settled screens.
Our QA before client feedback
Our own QA rounds on validation and on phone and tablet widths came before each client feedback round.
Environments per brand
Each brand had its own local, staging and live environments, and changes were moved to live for both brands.
What this unlocked
The dealership layer and the shared code base let one portal serve more dealerships and brands without a separate build for each.
Related work
Have a product with the same kind of constraints?
Tell us what already exists and what you want it to do. We will tell you what it takes.