Demand-Side Platform (DSP) Development for Outfit7

Outfit7, a leading game-development company, partnered with Clearcode to design and build its proprietary demand-side platform (DSP) to power the promotion of its catalog of mobile games.

Below is an overview of our partnership with Outfit7 and details about the how we helped them replace their existing solution with a custom-built DSP.

CLIENT

App Developer

INDUSTRY

Gaming

COMPANY SIZE

400+ employees

COUNTRY

Cyprus

About Outfit7

Outfit7, one of the most well-known companies in the mobile-gaming industry, asked us to build a custom demand-side platform (DSP) designed specifically for integrating advertisements into its gaming applications.

At the time, Outfit7 was using an in-house ad serving system, but wanted to replace it with a custom-built DSP. 

Outfit7 decided to transition towards a cross-promotional model, essentially aiming to promote their own games inside its existing apps. This plan was formulated to introduce its new games to its existing users. 

Clearcode assisted Outfit7 in honing the focus of the MVP phase. We were involved in helping Outfit7 build a platform designed to enable the promotion of its games across its catalog of games.

Key points

Product

Outfit7, a leading game-development company, partnered with Clearcode to design and build its proprietary demand-side platform (DSP) to power the promotion of its catalog of mobile games.

Goal

Clearcode’s goal was to create a product that would allow Outfit7 to promote its own games on their existing mobile apps, enhance data visibility and transparency, align with its tech stack, and retain flexibility for future needs.

Delivered solutions

Clearcode delivered the project with a set of critical features, such as campaign management for multiple ad formats, a bidder for bidding on and purchasing ad impressions, a tracking component, and an API for sending campaign data to the bidder.

Development

We were responsible for both frontend and backend development. The development process included user interface (UI) design, API development, the creation of a bidder, tracker, and metrics exporter, and the design of a creative-selection mechanism.

The Goal

Being aware of the business potential in the promotion of game installations, Outfit7 wanted to build a DSP that would enable it to cross-promote new games on its existing mobile apps.

The business use case

Prior to starting our collaboration, Outfit7 was using an in-house ad server. However, it was dissatisfied with the platform as they had no control over the existing solution and couldn’t adapt it to their business needs.

Therefore, Outfit7 wanted to create a new product that would allow them to promote new games on its existing mobile apps, while providing it with ownership and control over the codebase, IP and product roadmap.

The most important goals for Outfit7 were to redesign the old system to adopt a bidding approach and deliver more precise ad decisioning based on performance. 

Outfit7 also wanted to achieve optimal compatibility with its current tech stack and retain the flexibility to extend the platform to meet future business plans and establish new partnerships with third-party advertisers.

To achieve this, building new custom tech was the only option.

Project goals

Being aware of the business potential in the promotion of game installations, Outfit7 wanted to build a DSP that would enable it to cross-promote new games on its existing mobile apps.

In particular, Outfit7’s requirements included building a solution that would enable:

  • The performance of ads to be optimized.
  • Control over the bidding process.
  • Easy access to the inventory through mobile SSPs with support for Prebid.
  • Management of their campaigns.
  • The ability to create analytics reports.

The main features and technical requirements

    • Campaign management

      Campaign management for multiple ad formats.

    • Bidder

      A bidder for bidding on and purchasing ad impressions.

    • Event tracking

      Tracking components (impressions, conversions, in-game actions).

    • Campaign data

      An API for sending campaign data to the bidder.

    Key feature: reinforcement learning

    Reinforcement learning is a process of training an algorithm to make decisions based on previously collected data.

    The algorithm we developed focused on selecting the highest-converting ad creatives for a given campaign.

    The naive way of selecting a creative is to do it randomly. However, sometimes we know that one of the creatives is performing better and should be selected more often. 

    The algorithm we developed, called the Softmax Multi-Armed Bandit algorithm, identifies which creative is performing the best by analyzing the number of impressions and conversions. From there, the algorithm selects the best performing creative when the DSP receives the bid request.

    This algorithm allows Outfit7 to increase the performance of the ad campaigns by selecting creatives that have the highest chances of converting (i.e. new game installations).

    What we did

    • Designed and developed the user interface.
    • Developed the campaign management system.
    • Developed the DSP API.
    • Built the bidder.
    • Built the tracker.
    • Developed the Metrics Exporter feature.
    • Developed the creative optimization mechanism using a reinforcement-learning algorithm.
    • Carried out performance analysis of the Softmax Multi-Armed Bandit algorithm.
    • Created technical documentation of the whole project.

    The result

    • We delivered a working MVP to Outfit7 that included all the required features and functionalities.
    • Outfit7 is testing the DSP internally.

    The technologies we used

    React

    Ant Design

    GO

    NodeJS

    NestJS

    TypeORM

    Fast HTTP

    Fiber

    Express

    Kubernetes

    Prometheus

    Redis

    PostgreSQL

    Google Kubernetes
    Engine

    Cloud SQL

    Cloud CDN

    Memorystore

    The keys to our success

    1. Our positive relationship with Outfit7 and responsiveness from the Outfit7 team.
    2. Our knowledge and experience in designing and building AdTech platforms.