auction

Predict, value, and bid on a single impression in about 10ms, billions of times a day. The signal is the pCTR-to-bid pipeline under a brutal latency budget, plus why calibration and budget pacing decide whether you make or lose money.

When a page loads, an ad slot is auctioned to dozens of bidders and a winner is chosen before the page finishes rendering, all in under 100ms. The design covers the auction mechanism, the brutal latency budget, budget pacing, and fraud. Here is how an exchange runs millions of auctions per second.