Case Study: Tapad achieves sub-millisecond, predictable real-time bidding for cross-platform advertising with Aerospike

Tapad Excels in Cross-Platform Advertising with Sub-Millisecond Query Responses

Tapad is a leader in cross-platform advertising that unifies user identity across computers, tablets, phones and TVs to deliver targeted real-time bidding (RTB) campaigns. The company needed a database that could manage billions of impressions and almost 2 billion devices while delivering predictable, ultra-low latency decisions inside a 50 millisecond bid window (about 25 ms for Tapad to respond).

Tapad deployed Aerospike’s real-time NoSQL key-value store (five server clusters), combining in‑RAM indexes with SSD-backed data to achieve predictable sub-millisecond query responses 95–99% of the time while handling ~50,000 TPS per server. The result: reliable RTB at scale—over 150 billion impressions per month—automatic rebalancing and fault tolerance during upgrades, and lower IT overhead through flash optimization and commodity hardware.

Tapad

Dag Liodden

Co-Founder and CTO