Case Study: So-net Media Networks achieves low-latency, web-scale real-time bidding (50K TPS, <10 ms) with Aerospike

So-Net Media Networks Demand-Side Platform Powers Real-Time Bidding and Ad Optimization

So-net Media Networks, part of So-net Entertainment Corporation, needed a high-performance data store for its Logicad demand-side platform to support real-time bidding (RTB) in Japan. The company required sub-120 ms end-to-end responses with each database transaction completing in ~10 ms, support for 10,000+ bid requests per second (≈50,000 TPS), automatic expiry of millions of records daily, 24x7 availability with no single point of failure, and easy scale-out—requirements unmet by their initial RDBMS, key-value store, and several evaluated NoSQL systems.

After a successful proof of concept, So-net deployed the Aerospike flash-optimized NoSQL database on a four-node cluster (Dell R610s with SSDs). Aerospike reliably stores ~500 million unique user records (≈2 TB replicated), predictably meets the <10 ms transaction requirement, handles 50,000 TPS on four nodes, delivers continuous high availability and linear scalability, and proved far more cost-effective—about 1/20th the cost of an equivalent DRAM solution.

So-Net

Satoshi Hoyano

So-net, Media networks President