Ads revenue down 10%

A root cause drill question from a product manager interview, set at Bazaario, a fictional value e-commerce company.

The question

What you're told upfront

• PM on Bazaario Ads (monetisation). Ads revenue down ~10% week on week; sudden, starting last Wednesday; stayed down.
• Orders, NMV, DAU flat. Not a sale; no outage; billing data verified. All India.
• Sellers pay per click (CPC); price set by an auction (second-price).

Skills this case tests

A starting metric tree

Ads revenue = sponsored impressions × click-through rate × cost per click

How to approach this case

Write the tree first and find which factor moved. Orders and traffic are flat, so the answer is inside the ads system. If cost per click moved, separate rate from mix: are the same auctions clearing lower, or did the mix of placements and categories shift? In a second-price auction the clearing price depends on our own rules and on how much competition there is between bidders, so check both sides with evidence. Ask which advertisers changed their behaviour, and why. Changes made by teams outside ads can affect revenue without anyone touching an ads setting, so ask broadly about what shipped last Wednesday. A strong close sizes the monthly loss against any saving behind the change, gives a fix for today and a prevention step, and names an alert that would have fired early.

The full method for quick structuring drills · A worked example answer

After the mock interview you get scores on five skills, what to fix with quotes from your answers, and the ideal path for this case.