Harish Balasubramanian is a product management executive who has spent his career building advertising products at major technology platforms. He previously served as Senior Director of Products at TikTok, where he led a 25-member team building scalable advertising solutions for small and medium businesses and creators.
His career also includes product roles at Amazon, Pinterest, eBay, and Samsung, all focused on advertising and helping businesses grow through digital marketing. Harish earned a Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from Anna University Chennai and completed the Executive Program in Product Management at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. We spoke with him about what he’s learned building ad products across very different platforms, and why the needs of smaller advertisers still drive most of his product decisions.
You’ve led advertising products at Reddit, TikTok, Amazon, and Pinterest. What’s one assumption about digital advertising that you held early in your career that you’ve completely reversed your thinking on?
When I first entered the Ads industry, I assumed Ads were mostly broadly targeted, and user value was mostly limited. However, that impression quickly changed. I learnt a lot about the amount of effort that goes into delivering user value and ensuring Ads were interactive and relevant.
SMBs often struggle to compete with enterprise advertisers who have bigger budgets and dedicated marketing teams. What’s one product decision you’ve made that specifically leveled that playing field?
Good question. In order to level the playing field we need to address different aspects of the entire advertising platform and lifecycle. However, one non-negotiable is having a self-serve platform that makes it extremely simple for SMBs to select the right marketing objective, set up campaigns easily, adopt best practices and a real-time dashboard showing key marketing metrics.
Walk me through a product launch that didn’t go as planned. What did the failure reveal about how small businesses actually use advertising platforms versus how product teams assume they do?
Early in my Ads career we launched the 1st version of our Ads product. We found success with large brands and decided it was time to expand to SMBs. However, when we opened the product for SMBs, the adoption was lower than expected. We soon realised most SMBs want simple and easy to use products with less complication.
You’ve worked across platforms with very different user behaviors – visual discovery on Pinterest, short-form video on TikTok, community-driven content on Reddit. How do those differences change what “effective advertising” even means?
Each of these platforms have different value proposition. Users come to the platform for different needs. So inherently the end user experience is very different. Building the same advertising experience across these platforms will not resonate with the users. The interesting challenge here is to balance different advertiser objectives (Upper funnel, mid-funnel, lower funnel) with the right end user advertising experience.
In order for advertising to be effective in each of these platforms the experience has to be native to the core user behavior, meet advertiser’s marketing objective and be scalable.
What’s something happening in ad tech right now that most people in the industry are underestimating?
User Privacy. With increased focus on trust and user privacy, the next few years might shape how the Ad tech industry operates. In addition, with the phase out of third-party cookies, advertising platforms will adopt newer ways to ensure Ads are relevant to their end users.
You’ve managed teams ranging from 25 people to smaller, high-impact groups. How does team size change the way you approach product development?
This is a complex question, but I will try to provide a simple answer where possible.
Actually, team size (process), team seniority (people) and business maturity (Product) define where I spend most of my time. The fundamentals of product management does not change but how I create impact does. In order to have a successful product and a well-run organization, it’s important to have a clear product strategy grounded in user problems and opportunities, and a process that accelerates decision-making.
Whenever I take up an existing product or create a new product from 0 to 1, where I should be spending most of my time and energy – defining the product strategy, bringing the right folks to the team, or setting up a mechanism that scales and
Looking at your career trajectory from engineer to product leader, what skill that has nothing to do with technology has mattered most?
For the last 20 years, I have seen a lot of technological evolution. Technologies that were once considered breakthroughs end up becoming commodities over the years. Some skills have even gotten obsolete. However, one of the skills that still holds true is ‘user empathy’. Be it as an engineer, product manager or product leader, this is one true skill that is still relevant.
