codingming

Real-time bidding (RTB) ad exchange platforms are designed to manage and automate the buying and selling of digital advertising inventory.

These platforms allow advertisers to bid on ad space in real-time and make automated decisions based on the value of the inventory.

When developing an RTB ad exchange platform, it’s important to consider the following:

  • Scalability: The platform should be able to handle a large volume of ad requests and bids, as well as handle high traffic.

  • Speed and performance: The platform should be able to process ad requests and bids quickly and efficiently, with minimal latency.

  • Security: The platform should be built with security in mind, to protect the privacy of users and the integrity of the data.

  • Data management: The platform should be able to store and manage large amounts of data, including user information, bid history, and analytics.

  • User interface: The platform should have a user-friendly interface that makes it easy for advertisers and publishers to manage their campaigns and inventory.

  • Automation: The platform should have automation features that allow advertisers to set up and manage campaigns easily.

  • Integration with other systems: The platform should be able to integrate with other systems such as demand-side platforms (DSPs), supply-side platforms (SSPs) and data management platforms (DMPs)

  • Compliance with industry standards: The platform should comply with industry standards such as OpenRTB, and GDPR.

  • Reporting and analytics: The platform should provide detailed reporting and analytics, which can help advertisers and publishers optimize their campaigns.

  • Support and maintenance: The platform should have a dedicated team for support and maintenance to ensure that the platform is running smoothly and fix any issues that arise.

Project Overview

A Europe-based DOOH advertising agency operating in more than 15 countries wanted to build an exchange platform that enables real-time bidding for optimal usage of its ad inventory & increasing profitability. They were using an inventory booking solution to pre-book their digital inventories based on ad requirements but were unable to leverage the locations that drove fewer bookings, resulting in revenue loss.

Challenges

  • No in-house technical resources to execute seamless RTB platform integration for digital ad bidding
  • Difficulty in tracking where & when the ads are showing
  • Inability to handle multiple requests for different order executions simultaneously
  • Inefficient tracking of unutilized ad inventory
  • Inability to remarket ad inventory to drive more sales
  • Capacity constraints for processing data in real-time & storing it in a data lake

Challenges

  • No in-house technical resources to execute seamless RTB platform integration for digital ad bidding
  • Difficulty in tracking where & when the ads are showing
  • Inability to handle multiple requests for different order executions simultaneously
  • Inefficient tracking of unutilized ad inventory
  • Inability to remarket ad inventory to drive more sales
  • Capacity constraints for processing data in real-time & storing it in a data lake

Solution

We developed an Exchange Platform that integrates an RTB system that allows multiple media owners to bid on ad inventory, with the winning ad being displayed on a digital screen.

Following the micro-services architecture, our team developed the following three components

  • Product-Adapter: Fetches inventory listings from different supply-side platforms (SSPs) and converts them for processing within the trading engine. It also notifies the SSP platform about the final status (when ad inventories are sold) once the auction is completed.
  • Trading-Engine: Retrieves processed data from “product-adapter” to optimize inventory listing based on various factors and publishes the “Exchange Supply Message” for the auction stream on Kafka. Further, it consumes “Exchange Demand Message” to prepare the final sales data for the SSP platforms and share it back with the “product adapter”.
  • Auction-Stream: Consumes “Exchange Supply Message” and sends the bid request to the demand-side platform (DSP). Then based on the auction, decides the winner, and alerts the DSP with a win or lose notification. It also publishes the sales data in the “Exchange Demand Message” for the trading engine.

The data team utilizes Exchange Supply Message & Exchange Demand Message and finally aggregates them in the data lake. From here the data can be queried from an SSP interface to generate reports that can be viewed by media owners.

Benefits

  • ~30 million digital auctions for OOH ads under 30 min with the new platform
  • 50% reduction in latency with high execution times
  • 100% utilization of available ad assets with hyper-precise targeting by location