How to design Google/FB Ads system?

PayPal / Eng
leetsprint

Go to company page PayPal Eng

leetsprint
Jun 21, 2020 6 Comments

I would like to know how to design an Ads system like Google and Facebook Ads engine, especially how AI/ML can be incorporated to recommend Ads accurately to the target audience.

For example, when I search for a specific product on Amazon, I get the same product as a recommendation on Instagram and/or FB. I think there is no AI/ML required for this one, but interested to know how these platforms interact with each other and how these things have been monetized.

Any pointers to resource/blog would be helpful.

Google search/Youtube didn't fetch me what I was looking for.

#engineering #software #swe #google #facebook #fb

comments

Want to comment? LOG IN or SIGN UP
TOP 6 Comments
  • Lyft
    eYmY56

    Go to company page Lyft

    eYmY56
    I'll try my best but an fyi, these ads engines are HUGE in complexity, headcount, and moving pieces, and unless there's a l7+ floating around on blind, you're unlikely to get insight into how the system actually works holistically.

    From my limited understanding ads as a service is mainly composed of:
    - ads marketplace - platform that allows advertisers to make bids as buyers, and g/f/etc are the sellers
    - user profile - this is honestly already very complex, all these ad companies build a profile of you through various identity matching, browser history, click-link-frequency, etc.
    - relevance engines - a whole variety of services that tl;dr take your user profile and somehow figure out what they should be showing you

    User profiles feed into these relevancy engines that then gets fed to the marketplace and advertisers can decide whether or not to buy an ad for that profile

    The relevancy engines are where it gets more interesting as these things run both nonstop in the background, and also on request. Basically you do a bit of processing as a user is browsing to prepare to match them to relevant targets and then when they user actually requests an ad (in the sense that htey open fb and fb requests an ad to serve them) their relevant targets go through more lightweight post processing and get matched within marketplace and that's how you see the final ad

    A lot of oversimplification here haha but hope that helps. Would love to hear from more ads experts. I'm no longer in the field but thought it was fascinating when I was there
    Jun 21, 2020 4
    • PayPal / Eng
      leetsprint

      Go to company page PayPal Eng

      leetsprint
      OP
      Not sugar coating you. But it's very rare to get an informative answer from someone in blind where everyone is TC obsessed.
      Jun 21, 2020
    • Fan of you Lyft person! Op, thanks for the post. I have been all πŸ“š about FB ads, have an upcoming onsite interview for DS role on the Ads team. Can I DM you? Would love to learn from your experience and any recommended topics! This will be of great great help!!
      Jul 1, 2021
  • Walmart
    AFamilyMan

    Go to company page Walmart

    BIO
    Been there, done that. Grey hairs.
    AFamilyMan
    I am on blind and believe it does lot of positivity because of people like this Lyft guy. πŸ‘
    Jun 21, 2020 0