Real Time Bidding on AWS Dmitri TchikatilovAdTech BD, AWSdmitrit@amazon.com

Agenda

1. Goals and how AWS works with RTB clients2. Observations and latest trends3. Building RTB solution on AWS4. Examples

RTB Definition

Real time bidding (RTB) refers to the practice of buying and selling display ad impressions through ad exchanges in real time and one impression at a time.

RTB Process Simplified1. User goes

to a web page

2. Ad impression is sent to an Ad

Exchange

3. Ad Exchange invites bidders

4. Highest bidder wins

the impression

5. Winning ad creative is

delivered

Programmatic Market - US

RTB $11B, 74% in 2015

Low margin - efficient operators have advantage

Programmatic direct buy is gaining market share too

Global RTB Market

1. Traffic is traded in a few key locationson AWS (e.g. us-east-1) and several large exchanges outside AWS

2. Easy to start buying traffic globally – roll out new AWS Regions (Korea, China, India – TBD)

RTB Elasticity for Traffic Volume Changes

Traffic changes drastically predictable – daily, weekly, seasonalAlso unpredictable – large scale events (LSE) (Kim Kardashian)

Sample Architecture

What is the Desired Degree of Control?

RTB Network Engineer

Where is the Non Differentiated Heavy Lifting?

Customer Manages

All-On Prem RTB

colo with Exchange S3,

Networking EC2

S3, Networking

EC2

S3, Networking

EC2

ASG, ELBDynamoDB

ASG, ELBDynamoDB

ManageAdminister

Algo, ML

Networking

• Days of RTB customers owning AS numbers are gone...• Large “legacy” colo display bidders and exchangers will

remain very relevant• New RTBs and Exchanges (Mobile, Video) pick AWS

and grow successfully• Simplified networking designs• Optimization of EC2 for networking, latest HVM AMIs

single root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV)

Front End Servers • Most people use ELB, sometime run their own ELB (HA Proxy, NginX)• Enable HTTP Persistent Connections (HTTP Keep-Alive)• Developer feedback - older legacy bidders C/C++, Java, Erlang, newer

systems – Node.JS, Python, Scala • Bidders are becoming more modular, dockerized• When traffic grows, use ELBs and ASGs dedicated to individual

exchanges• Single AZ deployments reduces the ELB latency by few ms.• Custom application level metric(s) is/are computed and published to

CloudWatch, ASG works off that custom metric(s)• Separating Bidding fleet from Exchange Listening (and not bidding)

Low Latency Caches

• Popular choices are: Aerospike, DynamoDB, Redis• DynamoDB hash (userId) + range (audience segment)

partitions• DynamoDB schemas considered to be a differentiator,

but we are looking to share some ideas and patters for best practices (user profile store/cookie store - low latency features for Machine Learning)

• Cross-region replication is becoming more common (Streams + Lambda) moving away from Storm

Data Collection + Analytics

Data from bidders is moved to a streaming service Apache Spark

Most popular choices are: Kinesis + Spark & Kafka + Spark

Batching of the data on the bidder to improve performance and economics

Example RTB – Cost Curve

Do I need co-located bidders?

Do I need a dedicated networking team?

Do I need to own networking equipment? 1 2 5 7 10

$0

$100,000

$200,000

$300,000

$400,000

$500,000

$600,000

Monthly RTB Fleet Spend vs. Roundrip Exchange Latency (ms)

Time (ms)

USD

Customer Perspective on RTB SolutionsCustomers have very different perspectives on what their business considers as competitive advantage

What is your competitive advantage?

What do you consider shareable knowledge? Customer 1 Customer 2 Customer 3

More advanced customers are sharing moreand raising the HL bar

HLHL

HL

“We run the RTB platform on more than 2,500 machines, approximately eight hours a day globally, at a cost of less than $0.05 per day per machine...”

“Because we’re running on AWS, we’re able to focus 95 percent of our staff on new product development. Using AWS allows us to focus on innovating our platform and solving customer problems.”

Valentino Volonghi, CTO AdRoll

Example: Enabling Real Time Bidding

Advertiser Solutions

Example: RTB Data Collection

Improved speed (mins to secs), simplicity & cost reductionOver 60 Billion events/day

Reducing data latency to seconds Ingesting approximately 150TB daily

Reducing Costs Everywhere

The company has saved tens of thousands of dollars. That’s between 20 and 30 percent of our total monthly AWS bill.

Gal Aviv Research & Development Group Manager

• 100 RIs + 800 Spot Instances• Partner – Spotinst

Check out EC2 Spot features – Spot Fleet API and Spot Bid Advisor

Solution Example: Ad Exchanges Outside AWS

20

EquinixAdIX

AWSCustomer

Ad ExchangeProvider

Ad ExchangeProvider

Ad ExchangeProvider

EquinixAdIX Ad Exchange

Provider

Ad ExchangeProvider

Ad ExchangeProvider

Ashburn

New York

Partner provides:Channel on NNI (<1GB) orDedicated port (>1GB)

Private IP

Public IP

Public IP

DX Partner

DX Partner

Reduce AWS traffic spend ~25%Predictable latency (vs. Internet)Reduced latency

AWS Regions as Centers of Gravity

Advertiser

Ad Exchange

Ad Network Publisher

Ad Network

Ad Network

Ad Network

Advertiser

Publisher

Reasons: Low latency Lower traffic costs Large scale secure

B2B data sharing

High Growth in Mobile Video

Dmitri TchikatilovDigital Advertising BDdmitrit@amazon.com