The transformative data solutions driving multi-million dollar ad sales growth

Photo courtesy of Abdul Muqtadir Mohammed Zubair

Opinions expressed by Digital Journal contributors are their own.

In the world of digital advertising, where data reigns supreme, one name stands out for his transformative contributions: Abdul Muqtadir Mohammed Zubair. With over 14 years of experience in data analytics and digital marketing, Zubair has become a vital figure in the industry. He is known for his creative solutions that drive substantial revenue growth. 

As the Senior Manager of Intelligence and Data architecture at Snapchat, Zubair’s work has transformed internal sales reporting and improved advertising outcomes for Fortune 500 companies. His journey from Amazon to Snapchat proves his exceptional ability to tackle complex business problems and deliver products that align with customer needs and desires

Driving change at Snapchat

Zubair’s journey continued at Snapchat, where he faced another significant challenge: the reliability of internal sales reporting. Before 2022, inconsistencies in metrics across teams led to misalignment and slow decision-making at the CXO level. 

Zubair engineered the entire data stack for internal sales reporting, creating a single source of truth data store that powered reporting for the whole sales organization and multiple cross-functional teams. 

“Working closely with the core engineering team, we designed and implemented a data model that resulted in highly authoritative datasets for the sales team,” Zubair recalls. The new data store reduced reporting defects by 95% and drove significant incremental ad revenue across all strategic initiatives. The data store surfaced crucial potential growth opportunities for the sales team, showcasing Zubair’s ability to deliver impactful solutions.

SDS is now the single source of truth for all sales related analytics at Snapchat covering use cases such as sales reporting, forecasting, and data science. In addition to driving reliability, Zubair’s work on SDS has also democratised access to data to a number of teams across Snapchat by enabling them to self service analyses for a wide range of use cases. This was made possible due to the innovative data architecture of SDS which Zubair designed and implemented allowing for seamless scalability and high accuracy at Snapchat. 

Sales insights at scale

After creating the data infrastructure for Snapchat sales reporting, Zubair was tasked with leveraging it to develop reporting for the entire sales organisation at Snapchat. in 2023, Zubair designed and built the Sales Intelligence Hub consisting of 3 reporting suites for leadership, middle management, and account executives, covering 20+ business critical sales metrics. 900+ sales professionals use the Sales Intelligence Hub for planning and decision making at the highest leadership level at Snapchat. SIH helped the sales team track revenue attainment in the order of $800+ Million in first fiscal quarter of 2024

Zubair also re-architected all underlying data models for revenue strategy intelligence systems and redesigned reporting so they could be compatible with a new central data architecture implemented across Snapchat. The new model for Revenue Strategy Analytics is now used for business critical bottoms up planning to set sales goals for the Snapchat sales team which has visibility at the CEO and executive leadership team at Snapchat. This new model helps forecast sales performance for targets totalling ~$5 BN. This model is also used to implement pivotal initiatives to bridge any gaps to quota.

At Snapchat, Zubair notably addressed the gap in capturing advertiser objectives and performance signals. Zubair designed a data engine that computed advertising metrics from upstream auction systems and compared them against inputs from the sales team.

Zubair created a scalable product feature that significantly improved advertising outcomes. “This initiative changed advertisers’ perception from ‘Not satisfied’ to ‘Happy,’ leading to a significant ramp-up of advertising investment from these brands,” Zubair notes.

The future of advertising

As digital advertising evolves, Zubair’s work constantly changes the industry. His ability to create data-driven solutions that drive substantial revenue growth and improve advertising outcomes positions him as a thought leader. Looking ahead, Zubair focuses on taking advantage of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance advertising strategies further.

“The future of advertising lies in the ability to harness data in ways that provide deeper insights and more personalized experiences for sales teams, such as using generative AI to improve sales analytics,” Zubair asserts. His vision for the future includes developing more sophisticated data models and integrating advanced analytics to stay ahead of industry trends and meet the needs of advertisers. 

Zubair’s contributions at Snapchat have had significant financial impacts and set new standards for data-driven advertising. His work exemplifies the power of innovation and the importance of a scientific methodology in digital marketing. Zubair’s influence on the industry is palpable even as he continues to create complex data and analytics products.