Grab公司如何建立一个可扩展的、高性能的广告服务器

GrabAds is a service that provides businesses with an opportunity to market their products to Grab’s consumer base. During the pandemic, as the demand for food delivery grew, we realised that ads could be a service we offer to our small restaurant merchant-partners to expand their reach. This would allow them to not only mitigate the loss of in-person traffic but also grow by attracting more customers.

GrabAds是一项为商家提供向 Grab 的消费者群体推销其产品机会的服务。在大流行期间，随着食品配送需求的增长，我们意识到，广告可以成为我们为小餐馆商家伙伴提供的一项服务，以扩大他们的影响力。这将使他们不仅能够减轻亲临现场的流量损失，还能通过吸引更多客户来实现增长。

Many of these small merchant-partners had no experience with digital advertising and we provided an easy-to-use, scalable option that could match their business size. On the other side of the equation, our large network of merchant-partners provided consumers with more choices. For hungry consumers stuck at home, personalised ads and promotions helped them satisfy their cravings, thus fulfilling their intent of opening the Grab app in the first place!

这些小商户伙伴中的许多人没有数字广告的经验，而我们提供了一个易于使用、可扩展的选择，可以匹配他们的业务规模。在等式的另一面，我们庞大的商户合作伙伴网络为消费者提供了更多的选择。对于被困在家中的饥饿消费者来说，个性化的广告和促销活动帮助他们满足了他们的渴望，从而实现了他们首先打开 Grab 应用的初衷!

Why build our own ad server?

为什么要建立我们自己的广告服务器？

Building an ad server is an ambitious undertaking and one might rightfully ask why we should invest the time and effort to build a technically complex distributed system when there are several reasonable off-the-shelf solutions available.

建立一个广告服务器是一项雄心勃勃的事业，人们可能会理所当然地问，既然有几个合理的现成的解决方案，我们为什么要投入时间和精力来建立一个技术上复杂的分布式系统。

The answer is we didn’t, at least not at first. We used one of these off-the-shelf solutions to move fast and build a minimally viable product (MVP). The result of this experiment was a resounding success; we were providing clear value to our merchant-partners, our consumers and Grab’s overall business.

答案是我们没有，至少开始时没有。我们使用这些现成的解决方案中的一个，快速前进并建立一个最小可行的产品（MVP）。这一实验的结果是巨大的成功；我们为我们的商户合作伙伴、消费者和 Grab 的整体业务提供了明确的价值。

However, to take things to the next level meant scaling the ads business up exponentially. Apart from being one of the few...