Engineering an AdTech Platform for Smarter Campaign Delivery

Leading telecommunications company that provides wireless voice and data services to customers in the United States.
 

• Disjointed systems: Existing digital screens and  applications operated in silos, lacking a unified management and reporting layer.
• Manual operations: Campaign scheduling, ad approvals, and reporting were manually executed, delaying go-live cycles and reducing efficiency.
• Device management complexity: Managing and monitoring thousands of connected screens without centralized control made uptime tracking and issue resolution difficult.
• Scalability issues: Ensuring the ad playback data pipeline could support a rapidly expanding fleet of 16,000+ devices across geographies was a key challenge.
• Limited observability: Inconsistent telemetry and performance metrics from devices hindered proactive maintenance and operational reliability.
• Lack of contextual adaptation: Ads could not dynamically adjust to contextual factors such as location or time-of-day, impacting engagement and relevance.
• Isolated analytics: Fragmented data and analytics systems prevented unified visibility into impressions, reach, and ad spend, limiting campaign optimization.
   

We engineered an end-to-end AdTech platform that unifies CRM, CMS, and ad delivery systems to automate and optimize DOOH advertising campaigns.
 

AdTech CMS

• Centralized content management platform designed to manage and distribute digital advertising content across target locations and connected devices.
• Supports multi-tenant access for both internal and third-party users, enabling efficient campaign creation, scheduling, and delivery.
• Manages all key entities of the in-store AdTech ecosystem, including Store & Device Management, Orders, Advertisers, Creative Assets, and Playlists.
• Integrated with Auth0 for secure authentication, tenant switching, and role-based access control (RBAC) to ensure users access only relevant features.
• Built using Angular 14, SCSS, HTML, Auth0, and Jest, ensuring a robust, scalable, and maintainable front-end framework.

AdTech Player App 

• Android-based player application responsible for executing ad campaigns as configured in the CMS.
• Communicates with content management API to retrieve assigned playlists, download creatives, and manage smooth sequential playback.
• Displays a default playlist during content downloads to maintain uninterrupted display experiences.
• Integrated with MDM for device provisioning, remote updates, and centralized management across retail endpoints.
• Supports Supply-Side Platform (SSP) integration for dynamic ad delivery from third-party sources.
• Implements a ping-based monitoring mechanism to log playback events and provide real-time performance analytics to the business team.

AdTech White-Label App (Third-Party Version)

• Specialized Android application built on a white-label architecture to enable seamless branding for enterprise clients without duplicating development efforts.
• Provides tailored ad delivery experiences for different retail partners while maintaining a unified, efficient codebase.
• Utilizes a loop-based ad playback system combining real-time slots with offline-capable assets to ensure uninterrupted operation.
• Integrates multiple backend APIs to ensure stability and observability.
• Ensures reliable playback, strong monitoring, and ease of maintenance across multiple client deployments.

Interactive In-Vehicle Tablet Application 

• Android tablet application enhances travel experiences for passengers through interactive entertainment and branded content.
• Built with Java and Kotlin using MVVM architecture, integrating TensorFlow, Media3 Exoplayer, Google Maps SDK, and Firebase for configuration and analytics.
• Offers interactive games, trivia challenges, weather updates, and content rooms with video feeds, music, and celebrity interviews.
• Features live location tracking, nap mode, and user-friendly controls for passengers to personalize their experience.
• Integrates with programmatic DOOH AdTech platform for exclusive content delivery and creative ad production platforms for interactive ad and mini-game creation.
• CI/CD implemented using GitLab CI, AWS CLI, and AWS Secrets Manager for secure, automated deployments.

Driver Companion Mobile Application

• Native iOS and Android app for managing driver accounts, payments, referrals, and tablet logistics.
• Developed using SwiftUI (iOS) and Jetpack Compose (Android) under MVVM architecture.
• Integrates Stripe and Plaid for payouts, Firebase for push notifications and crashlytics, and Datadog for analytics.
• Key features include real-time earnings tracking, cash-out and prize-out options, referral program management, shipping preferences, and profile updates.
• Employs biometric authentication and end-to-end encryption for secure access and data protection.
• Offers flexible UI themes with dark/light mode for improved accessibility and personalization.

Analytics and Real-Time Business Insights

• Data Integration and Modeling: Delivered Tableau dashboards that consolidated data from the CRM, CMS, and ad playback pipelines into a Snowflake data warehouse. This unified data model enabled a single source of truth for campaign performance analytics.
• Audience Measurement and Attribution:  Applied industry-standard audience metrics to translate playback data into standardized measures of impressions, campaign reach, and ad spend distribution across regions.
• Real-Time Performance Insights: Data pipelines refreshed every few minutes, giving marketing and operations teams live visibility into campaign reach and device uptime across all deployed endpoints. 

• Architecture: Distributed microservices deployed on AWS, ensuring horizontal scalability, high availability, and failover resilience.
• Workflow Automation: Automated campaign approvals, playlist rotation, and ad publishing managed through a Python-based microservice layer built with Django and FastAPI.
• Telemetry and Data Collection: FastAPI services capture ad playback events and uptime telemetry from over 16,000 edge devices in near real time.
• Observability: Integrated Prometheus and Grafana dashboards for performance monitoring, uptime visualization, and proactive alerting.
• Security: Implemented OAuth 2.0 and JWT-based authentication; all inter-system communication secured via HTTPS.
• CI/CD: Established GitLab pipelines with AWS ECR for streamlined deployments across multiple environments.

• 63% reduction in campaign activation time through workflow automation.
• 45% boost in ad engagement via context-aware targeting (location, weather, and time-based).
• 99.7% uptime achieved across 16,000+ edge devices with real-time observability.
• Unified DOOH and in-vehicle  media under a single intelligent AdTech platform, improving operational efficiency.
• Enhanced passenger engagement and dwell time with interactive tablet content powered by AI and media SDKs.
• Empowered advertisers with real-time analytics, measurable ROI, and dynamic creative optimization.