Case Study: Scaling Sovrn’s Advertising Exchange with AWS
Sovrn, a leading advertising technology company, operates an ad exchange handling approximately 250 billion requests per day. As traffic volume grew and patterns shifted, their on-premises infrastructure struggled to keep pace—leading to reliability issues, scaling challenges, and operational overhead.
Partnering with our software consulting firm, Sovrn undertook a major transformation: migrating their core exchange platform to Amazon Web Services (AWS). The result? A flexible, scalable, and resilient cloud-native architecture that dramatically improved reliability and operational efficiency.
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Challenge
Sovrn's legacy infrastructure was built on-premises, supporting high-throughput ad auctions with low latency requirements. However, the static nature of on-prem environments couldn't accommodate traffic fluctuations or scale dynamically.
Key challenges included:
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Frequent outages and error spikes during peak traffic
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Manual scaling limitations and insufficient elasticity
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High operational burden for infrastructure maintenance
With the exchange responsible for real-time bidding at massive scale, stability and responsiveness were non-negotiable. Sovrn needed an architecture that could elastically scale, reduce complexity, and improve uptime.
Solution
Cloud-Native Architecture on AWS
Our team led a full-stack migration of Sovrn’s ad exchange to AWS, re-architecting systems for cloud efficiency and high availability.
Kubernetes with Amazon EKS
The exchange's core services were containerized and deployed on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS). The number of EKS clusters now adjusts dynamically based on load, ensuring high performance during traffic surges while optimizing cost during quieter periods.
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Java-based applications now run in scalable Kubernetes pods
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Shared file systems are stored in Amazon S3 and distributed across pods
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Auto-scaling and flexible instance types (Graviton/x86) enable cost-effective compute
Database and Caching Overhaul
Several components of the data layer were modernized using AWS managed services:
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MySQL was migrated to Amazon RDS, reducing maintenance overhead
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Redis clusters handle caching and real-time operations
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Apache Kafka was replaced with Redpanda for better event streaming scalability (non-AWS service)
From Aerospike to DynamoDB with DAX
One of the most impactful improvements came from replacing Sovrn’s self-hosted Aerospike cluster with Amazon DynamoDB, used as a key-value store for reader ID mappings.
Previously, Sovrn experienced:
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High operational costs due to complex Aerospike maintenance
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Frequent performance issues from manual tuning and configuration
We designed a globally replicated, multi-region DynamoDB solution with appropriate TTL settings for data lifecycle management. During migration, Aerospike and DynamoDB ran in parallel to ensure a smooth cutover.
Post-migration:
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Reader match rates remained consistent
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Latency was slightly higher (1–3ms), but within acceptable bounds
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DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX) was introduced to reduce latency and cost
With DAX:
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97% of calls were served from the cache at sub-millisecond latency
Only 3% hit the underlying database, significantly lowering operational costs
Results
Since migrating to AWS, Sovrn has seen measurable improvements across performance, reliability, and cost-efficiency.
Key outcomes:
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Significant reduction in production incidents
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Greater operational agility via auto-scaling and cloud-native services
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Improved cost control through instance flexibility and managed services
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Simplified architecture with fewer moving parts to maintain
The move to AWS has empowered Sovrn to scale their exchange confidently, respond to traffic changes in real time, and focus more resources on innovation instead of infrastructure.
Conclusion
For companies operating at the scale of Sovrn, infrastructure can either be a bottleneck or a launchpad. By partnering with us and embracing AWS, Sovrn transformed a high-load, high-risk platform into a modern, cloud-native system built for growth.
This case underscores not only the power of AWS for AdTech workloads but also the value of experienced partners who can deliver strategic migrations with precision.