Database Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 7. Online Advertising
Networks
In this chapter, we'll examine building an online advertising network that connects advertisers
and media websites. Advertisers provide the ads for display, with each ad designed for a par-
ticular
ad zone
. Media sites, on the other hand, provide content pages for display with various
regions marked for serving ads. When the media site displays a page, it makes a request to the
ad network for one or more ads to display in its ad zones.
As part of the ad serving, the ad network records the number of pageviews of each ad in order
to track statistics for the ad, which may then also be used to bill the advertiser.
Solution Overview
This solution is structured as a progressive refinement of the ad network, starting out with
the basic data storage requirements and adding more advanced features to the schema to sup-
port more advanced ad targeting. The key performance criterion for this solution is the latency
between receiving an ad request and returning the (targeted) ad to be displayed.
Design 1: Basic Ad Serving
A basic ad-serving algorithm consists of the following steps:
1. The network receives a request for an ad, specifying at a minimum the
site_id
and
zone_id
to be served.
2. The network consults its inventory of ads available to display and chooses an ad based
on various business rules.
3. The network returns the actual ad to be displayed, recording the pageview for the ad as
well.
