It’s designed to replace human negotiations with machine learning and AI-optimisation. The goal is to increase efficiency and transparency for both the advertiser and the publisher.

This is done through real-time auctions where ads are bought at the same as a visitor loads a website.

If you’re interested in learning a bit more about programmatic and how it works – this is the article for you!

FTB4FREE is exactly the tool you need to optimise your advertisement.

RTB4Free is a mostly complete, open source advertising Demand Side Platform (DSP). Completely "Dockerized" and uses well known open source tools. Contains 3 major components:

1. OpenRTB Real Time Bidder: Written in Java 1.11 and implements RTB v 2.8.
2. Campaign Manager: React based campaign manager for controlling campaigns. Uses Postgres for database operations.
3. Data Management Platform: A DMP developed with Elastic Search, Logstash, and Kibana.

Note, current improvements are ongoing, the code can change without notice.

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OpenRTB Engine 2.8¶

OPENRTB Bidding engine (2.8) in Java 1.8. Supports banner, native, audio and video ads. Try the stand-alone bidder in your environment using Docker-Compose in your environment:

Campaign Manager¶

Try the React-based stand-alone campaign manager in your environment using Docker-Compose:

Data Management Platform¶

Data Management Platform (DMP) provides campaign and system analytics with the ELK Stack, Try the stand-alone DMP in your environment using Docker-Compose:

Limitations¶

Currently, there are a couple of holes in the current implementation to be aware of:

1. Kubernetes Deployments are incomplete. If you have an AWS deployment you want to share with us, that would be awesome. We will attempt to get a better handle on this in a future major release.
2. Accounting reports in Kibana don't exist. We rely on Elastic Search for storing win records. We currently don't have any account level reports available in Kibana. We will focus on this in a future major release.
3. Multi-tenant support is 90% there, but there are still some holes in it.

Building the System¶

The source code for the RTB4FREE system is located here

Pre-Requisites¶

To work with the source you will need:

1. Java 1.11
2. Make
3. Maven
4. Mkdocs
5. Minio Client
6. NPM
7. pg_restore
8. Python 3.6+
9. Yarn

But Debian users beware. Yarn on your distro may be the wrong program. See the next section if you are a debian user.

Debian Users Beware¶

By default, the yarn in the debian distro is not the yarn for working with react. Please uninstall the old yarn and install it with npm. See here:

    $yarn --version    0.32+git

If it says ***+git, this is wrong! Now do this:

    $sudo apt remove cmdtest    $npm install -g yarn    $yarn --version    1.22.11

All better now.

Clone the Repo¶

The goal of the makefile is to create the docker container necessary for deploying the bidder. First step is to git clone the distribution.

    $git clone https://github.com/jacamars/Newbidder.git

After cloning, set your S3 (and MINIO) configuration .env file for running docker-compose and passing your AWS credentials to the containers. Create a .env file in ~Newbidder directory (wherever you cloned the code into). In this case we will use MINIO default credentials.

AWSACCESSKEY=AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLEAWSSECRETKEY=wJalrXUtnFEMI/K7MDENG/bPxRfiCYEXAMPLEKEYS3ENDPOINT=http://minio:9000

Build and Start¶

Application¶

The second step is to 'make application', or simply 'make' will create all the components necessary for the docker container.

    $make application

This will compile the JAVA application into an all-in-one JAR file, it will then create the campaign manager react application, and then create the docker container.

Start Server¶

The second step is to start the bidder and all its other component parts

This script will run docker-compose, do some clean up, and restart docker-compose. When it is complete the system will be operationsl.

    $make firsttime

After running this script once, you can bring the system up and down with docker compose.

Minio¶

The third step, 'make minio' is executed after 'make application'. The purpose is to copy the initial data files the bidder uses to convert 2 character country names into 3 character names, zip code information, and CIDR blocks to block common bot addresses.

    $make minio

Note, the directory /tmp/s3 will contain the buckets and objects used by the bidder. If you want to change the location of the hosted volume, or to replace with Amazon S3, modify the makefile.

Restore-db¶

The fourth step is to put a sample campaign into the system. Using make restore-db.

This command will be executed after make minio. The command copies a sample campaign into the database for\ you to test with.

Use the backup-db target to save your database over this file, then you can run the restore-db target to restore your most recently saved changes.

The command restores the database.backup file to the postgres database. Note, By default it connects to localhost:54321, you will need to adjust this to point to the postgres container if localhost is not the destination.

    $make restore-db

Campaign Manager¶

Point your browser to localhost:8080. Then click "Campaign Manager". The credentials to login are:

Org: rtbfreeUser: ben.faul@rtb4free.comPassword: zuluServer: localhost:7379

Sample Bids¶

Once the system is running, you can send some sample bids with a built-in script. Type:

    $tools/samplebids

This will transmit 100 bids.

In order to send bids continuously, with wins and pixels mixed in use the following:

    $tools/load-elastic

Login to ELK¶

You can login to Kibana and see the information about received bids/wins/pixels/conversions by pointing your browser to localhost:5601

There is no login, the system simply starts.

Other Targets¶

Local¶

The 'make local' compiles just the JAVA application. Eg:

    $make local

This just creates the classes, it does not build the JAR file.

React¶

The 'make react' command compiles the REACT based campaign manager into a deployable www directory.

    $make react

This uses YARN to make the system.

Docker¶

The 'make docker' command creates the docker container that holds the react-based campaign manager and the JAVA based bidder. It does not compile these artifacts first.

    $make docker

This will create the linux image used by the applications, but does not compile them.

Backup-db¶

This command will back up your current POSTGRES database into a dump file.

    $make backup-db

By default it connects to localhost:54321, you will need to adjust this to point to the postgres container if localhost is not the destination.

It creates a file called 'database.backup' in the current working directory.

Clean¶

This command deletes the class files.

    $make clean

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Further Reading: http://www.rtb4free.com/home/overview/