Scalable Real-Time Bidding Platform Enhancement with Microservice Architecture

The client faces technical challenges in developing a real-time bidding (RTB) ad exchange capable of handling high volumes of ad and bid requests with minimal latency. Key issues include maintaining rapid response times during scalability demands, propagating inventory updates efficiently across multiple exchange instances, and ensuring high availability without performance degradation. Without addressing these issues, the client risks low fill rates, reduced ad revenue, and poor user experience due to delayed ad serving responses.

A mid-to-large size technology company specializing in programmatic advertising solutions, aiming to develop a high-performance supply-side platform (SSP) or ad exchange.

• Design and implement a microservice architecture that supports horizontal scaling to meet high request volumes.
• Establish an efficient interservice communication system using a publish/subscribe messaging pattern to propagate inventory updates swiftly and reliably.
• Develop a centralized inventory updater service to manage inventory changes, reduce resource usage, and ensure consistent updates across exchange instances.
• Achieve stable, low-latency response times suitable for RTB auctions within a 250ms timeframe.
• Enable the ad exchange platform to scale seamlessly, increase inventory sales to Demand Side Platforms (DSPs), and provide the most up-to-date inventory data.

• Microservice architecture supporting independent deployment and scalability of core components.
• Interservice communication via a publish/subscribe (pub/sub) messaging layer to rapidly propagate inventory updates.
• An inventory populator service acting as a proxy to efficiently synchronize inventory changes from the SSP to exchange instances.
• Automated inventory change detection with hashing and scheduled updates to optimize resource usage.
• Local inventory storage with real-time update capabilities to enable quick ad slot availability response.

• External SSP systems for inventory data retrieval
• Demand Side Platforms (DSPs) for bid requests and responses
• Cloud storage solutions for inventory data management

• System must support high request volumes with response times within 250ms for RTB auctions
• Horizontal scalability allowing each microservice to independently scale based on load
• Reliable inventory propagation with minimal delay to ensure data consistency
• High availability with fault isolation for individual microservices
• Secure messaging and data handling to protect inventory and bid data

The platform will enable the client to maintain stable performance under high load conditions, significantly increase ad inventory sales to DSPs, and serve the most current inventory data. This will lead to improved fill rates, higher ad revenue, and enhanced competitiveness in the programmatic advertising ecosystem, echoing the improvements observed in response times, scalability, and operational flexibility achieved in similar implementations.