Kobler 2.0 provides new and raw technology under the hood

Dear All, on the technology side we have spent the last months working on changing the front end technologies and making the web design more 2021. As Kristian and Thomas, two of the main web developers behind it said, “think of it as removing the engine of the car and painting it in a new colour while the car is driving.”

So why have we gone through all that trouble? The major drivers were the outdated technologies (Angular 1.0 and JavaScript), and the software design itself was too complex, making it difficult to respond to customer needs in a timely manner and to have the right competency in-house.

With the new web stack we are using industry standard React and TypeScript in a very clean way; balancing new features with code robustness and acceptable level of technical debt. Secondly the software architecture is simplified and more scalable. There is a lot of truth in the 40 year old KISS principle. Thus going forward it should take considerably less time to incorporate new market needs in the platform user interface.

Johannes is the main design oriented web developer behind the transformation. His professional mission in life is to make sure the customers have the best user experience possible. Here are some of the changes he thinks are worth highlighting:

“Overall the response time is much more snappy. Presenting new information takes a split second, and batch updating large amounts of data like bids or placements is reduced by 90%. Another convenient feature for our customers, is the automatic saving of session data when switching between the tabs.

The “content target” user interface now shows two search boxes, which is the single most important thing to use to quickly target the right content. Also you can now delete any content target which is not tied to a campaign.

In the Campaign interface there is a new design presenting graphs and numbers. The date picker is new and blends better into the user interface. On the ad group level there is now a search functionality for choosing content targets and creatives on the same page, thus no page switching. Last but not least, the help texts are improved.”

Throughout the year, and hopefully month by month, you will see further changes in the web user interface. The larger web changes we are working on are improved content targeting and budget prediction, further design upgrades, and a platform which better reflects how you are organized in terms of account hierarchies and managing advertisers and campaigns. The goal is to continuously improve the platform so it becomes more and more convenient for you to do contextual advertising across all the 100+ media connected to the Kobler platform in Sweden and Norway.

In an upcoming blog post we will share more on what are the changes coming up in the other parts of the technology stack such as analytics, machine learning, bidding and the system backend domains.

We hope you enjoyed our first technology blog post! If there is anything you want us to address in the next blog posts, or if you want to exchange points of view on where the industry is going and where the services of Kobler fit in, feel free to contact me!

Karim@kobler.no