Established in 2007 and publicly listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange Growth Market, MicroAd operates as a comprehensive data company with a core focus on predictive digital marketing through big data, machine learning and AI.
At the core of MicroAd’s offerings is its data platform, UNIVERSE, which aggregates vast amounts of consumer behavior data sourced from over 210 partner companies. Building on this platform, MicroAd provides two key services: UNIVERSE Ads, an advertising delivery solution, and MicroAd COMPASS, a monetization service for publishers.
Under the leadership of President and CEO Kentaro Watanabe, MicroAd delivers marketing products that leverage data across diverse industries such as automotive, food and beverage, cosmetics and public sectors. Watanabe places high value on data, referring to it as the “oil of the 21st century,” and envisions a future where the integration of data and AI gives rise to new industries and services.
Looking ahead, MicroAd continues to evolve as a forward-looking enterprise, transitioning from a traditional ad-tech company to a comprehensive data company with a growth strategy firmly rooted in data utilization.
At-a-Glance
As a leader in predictive analytics for digital marketing, MicroAd is dedicated to using data to anticipate and steer consumer behavior. To sustain this mission, MicroAd sought a robust solution to streamline and scale its data infrastructure while enabling rapid deployment and enhancing security. With SUSE Rancher Prime, MicroAd can efficiently manage Kubernetes clusters, supporting its massive data lake and other applications, optimizing operational costs and enabling its team to focus on delivering cutting-edge insights.
The journey to containerization
The digital advertising landscape is shifting rapidly as privacy regulations tighten and advertisers prepare for a cookieless world. In July 2024, Google’s revised stance on third-party cookies reignited the conversation around privacy, pushing companies to prioritize transparency while finding innovative ways to target audiences effectively.
Yasukazu Nagatomi, Senior Engineer at MicroAd, explains: “The entire industry is focused on limiting the use of cookies to respect user privacy. At MicroAd, we have made significant investments in developing cookieless alternative technologies for our advertising delivery platform (Demand-Side Platform, or DSP) and publisher ad monetization platform (Supply-Side Platform, or SSP) to stay ahead of these changes.”
Beyond privacy, MicroAd faces the challenges of ad fraud and brand safety, which have been long-standing concerns in display advertising. “Display ads present unique risks, because it’s hard to control what content your ad might appear alongside,” Nagatomi elaborates.
“Each company has its own brand safety standards, which makes it difficult to maintain consistency.” To address this, Japan established JICDAQ, a third-party certification body promoting digital ad quality and protecting brands from fraudulent or unsafe ad placements. MicroAd earned JICDAQ certification as part of its commitment to quality, bolstered by its efforts to build infrastructure that supports post-cookie strategies.
Furthermore, an important challenge facing the digital advertising industry is the growing demand for near-real-time or real-time processing of both first-party and third-party data. To address this increasing need for massive computing resources, MicroAd continues to invest in building and advancing a scalable data processing infrastructure, as well as a platform capable of rapidly and efficiently analyzing large volumes of data to enable highly personalized and relevant advertising experiences. To achieve this, a sophisticated technical foundation that can support future growth is absolutely essential.
“Using Rancher Prime has allowed us to optimize our data processing capabilities without compromising performance. It has also enabled us to reduce our administrative workload by 50%.”
Why Rancher Prime?
“Managing the complexity of our data lake and transitioning from traditional Hadoop clusters to a Kubernetes-based setup required a robust solution,” says Nagatomi. MicroAd wanted a platform that would not only handle massive volumes of data but also adapt flexibly to the evolving requirements of the digital advertising industry, where agility, scalability and data integrity are critical.
MicroAd evaluated several options, including Red Hat OpenShift and SaaS platforms like Databricks and Big Query by Google Cloud. Ultimately, the team determined that Rancher Prime offered the most effective balance of cost, control, functionality and migration expense for its Kubernetes environment.
Rancher Prime allows MicroAd to streamline cluster management and deploy workloads more efficiently. “Our infrastructure relies on a high-density, scalable computing environment; Kubernetes was the logical choice and Rancher Prime offered us the operational ease we needed,” says Nagatomi. The solution’s multi-cluster management simplifies Kubernetes administration, especially as MicroAd continues to expand its data operations. With Rancher Prime, MicroAd has been able to consolidate its infrastructure, reducing overall operational costs by 20% and freeing up resources for innovation.
Ease of access and security were also pivotal in the decision. Rancher Prime’s user interface allows users, including cluster administrators, to access Kubernetes cluster resources without needing a deep technical background, which has helped reduce the onboarding costs associated with adopting Kubernetes. Furthermore, with GitHub integration for streamlined access control, Rancher Prime has enabled MicroAd to manage permissions more securely, reinforcing the company’s brand safety and privacy goals.
The impact of Rancher Prime
“Using Rancher Prime has allowed us to optimize our data processing capabilities without compromising performance,” says Nagatomi. “It has also enabled us to reduce our administrative workload by 50%.”
The team transitioned from Hadoop clusters to a modern data lakehouse architecture with Apache Iceberg, Apache Spark and Trino running on Kubernetes clusters managed through Rancher Prime. This setup has given MicroAd’s engineers the ability to handle complex data workloads with greater agility and reliability, which in turn strengthens MicroAd’s ability to deliver high-quality predictive analytics.
The support from SUSE has been a valuable asset for MicroAd’s team throughout this transition. By providing intuitive tools and expert guidance, SUSE has made it easier for team members at all levels to contribute to Kubernetes management, fostering a culture of continuous learning within the infrastructure team. “Rancher Prime and the surrounding support network have really empowered us, particularly for less experienced engineers who can now manage Kubernetes clusters confidently,” explains Nagatomi.
What’s next for MicroAd?
Looking forward, MicroAd plans to continue evolving its data platform to offer even more powerful predictive insights. One of its key initiatives is to expand the capabilities of its data lakehouse to support real-time and near-real-time data processing. This will allow MicroAd to deliver insights faster and strengthen clients’ decision-making processes.
MicroAd is also looking into using Change Data Capture (CDC). CDC would reflect data operations from business system databases into a data lakehouse in realtime or near real-time. This approach aims to significantly reduce the development costs traditionally associated with handling batch processing by building an environment that enables efficient resource utilization, minimizing system load and data transfer costs.
“The migration from our old data infrastructure has only just begun. However, thanks to Rancher Prime, we have gained the flexibility and security needed to push the boundaries of predictive analytics,” concludes Nagatomi. “As we continue to grow, our Kubernetes infrastructure will not only support our data platform, but also play a central role in driving innovation and scaling to meet future demands.”
With SUSE solutions underpinning this journey, MicroAd’s vision of becoming a truly comprehensive data company is within reach.