MediaMath Saves $2 Million on AWS by Turning Data into Real-Time Insights

Executive Summary

Established in 2007, MediaMath enables marketers to reach the audiences they want at the scale they need to achieve the outcomes they desire. Their digital advertising platform analyzes enormous volumes of data to make decisions in milliseconds, so they need scaled solutions that can handle those volumes at incredible speeds.

To meet this objective, MediaMath partnered with the most forward-thinking brands and agencies to build on the leading edge of technology and innovate at scale. MediaMath combined an open platform, purpose-built for enterprise marketers and powered by machine learning. When combined with the power of CloudCheckr, now from Spot by NetApp, MediaMath was able to find $2 million in annual cost savings.

These practices have helped MediaMath to become the leading independent programmatic company for marketers. MediaMath’s technology analyzes more volume every day than the top 10 stock exchanges in the world combined, which amounts to about 200 billion customer opportunities daily. They are trusted by two-thirds of the Fortune 500 and partner with thousands of developers and agencies to improve business outcomes.

Why CloudCheckr

CloudCheckr unifies native AWS data to deliver the most robust cloud optimization and governance solution in today’s marketplace. CloudCheckr is agentless and relies on AWS data sources including CloudTrail logs, Config logs, VPC flow logs, CloudWatch metrics and API calls. CloudCheckr generates a complete picture of a user’s environment that shows billing details, multi-accounts, resources, configurations, permissions, changes, and more.

CloudCheckr then analyzes that picture to find operational efficiencies, identify exposures, and automate mitigation steps. CloudCheckr presents its results through automated reports and alerts as well as integrates with leading tools from technology partners.

MediaMath is able to access CloudCheckr results through:

• Actionable dashboards and reports
• Automated outputs such as emails and SNS topics
• Third party tools and solutions
• CloudCheckr’s robust API
• Exportable tables and CSV files

All of this delivers MediaMath the most relevant native AWS data with the least amount of effort in the shortest period of time.

Results

MediaMath was seeking to hardline ownership of cloud resources to their teams for meeting specific needs, requirements, and timing. At MediaMath the cloud is regarded and treated as just another data center in their infrastructure. Operationally, automation tools and continuous delivery/integration systems see the cloud as just another facility that houses a team’s resources. CloudCheckr was the no-brainer solution for MediaMath’s team to bring unprecedented accountability, budgeting predictability and an improved security posture to their cloud resources that further scaled in their operational model.

“When we were looking through the various options of AWS billing/inventory/ security consolidation platforms available, two things that made CloudCheckr stand out for us were the simplicity of its user interface for reporting and the granularity of its feature set,” said Patrick Neville, Manager of Systems Operations at MediaMath. “There are few applications comparable to CloudCheckr that really allow an end-user to feel that they have total control over the Detailed Billing Report.”

The reduction of effort in being able to tie service usage to specific resources on a granular level, as well as locating giant holes in optimization of their account use, has been invaluable. MediaMath has been able to consolidate training for the application with the CloudCheckr support team, which has opened doors internally for product planning in the cloud that follows an identical design to product planning in their own physical data center locations.

CloudCheckr inventory and billing insights allow MediaMath to monitor the full suite of AWS tools that they use. Cost increases and best practice options are alerted through internal ticket systems for team follow up. MediaMath is able to offer the same options for the security checks in CloudCheckr, allowing them to easily police different team usage in the cloud both directly and indirectly.

Reserved Instance recommendations from CloudCheckr have changed how MediaMath views their long running, on-demand instances across all accounts. They have been able to make the right purchases based on these recommendations and can confirm directly with AWS account teams that they are the “right choice,” which saves them roughly $2 million over a year of usage. CloudCheckr has become an invaluable tool when planning resources for new product applications or tying new third-party workloads to specific clients.

Implementation of CloudCheckr was simple. Role sharing was available to provide accurate results of MediaMath’s account, and they describe CloudCheckr’s support during the process as “extremely generous” in helping them get up and running with webinars and open information for their teams. They describe the experience as:

• Convenient
• Simple
• Data-Driven

MediaMath recommends CloudCheckr to any user seeking to manage their cloud environment from a spend, inventory, or security angle. They describe the platform as “great for long term use or to take control of overwhelming environments already in existence.”