System design interview question
Design a Distributed Real-Time Bidding and Ad Auction System like Google Ad Exchange at Scale
Design a system that processes ad auction requests from millions of publishers and bidders across the globe in real-time with sub-100ms latency. The system must handle 500K requests per second, match advertisers to inventory slots based on complex bidding strategies, maintain bid state consistency across regions, support dynamic creative optimization, and serve impressions while logging billions of events daily for billing and analytics. Key constraints include strict latency SLAs, high availability requirements, eventual consistency for non-critical data, and the need to support real-time bidding logic customization per advertiser.
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