Home > Case studies >
ClearAds & Free TV
Ensuring operational continuity and improved user experience: ClearAds & Free TV
4mation delivers security enhancements, application updates and ongoing improvements to the UX/UI design on two ClearAds portals – Oasis and Tribe. We also safeguard ClearAds from massive revenue loss, protecting their systems from API failures, network issues and physical natural disasters.
The story
ClearAds provides reviews and classification services to ensure ads comply with advertising codes across a range of media channels. Through the review process, ClearAds can provide its services from concept to final copy.
Since 2009, 4mation has provided custom solutions, IT administration support, and ensure the security of ClearAds and Free TV systems. We’ve built and continue to maintain Oasis, the ClearAds online application system where users can apply for an ad and get it checked. Moreover, we look after their internal Tribe portal used by the ClearAds team.
In addition, we also recently completed a ‘disaster recovery’ project, preventing production servers from downtime and ensuring their members have 24/7 access to services.
“The 4mation team work collaboratively with the ClearAds team – they are always willing to help and quick to respond to any issue that arises. Consistent and continuous communication with the 4mation team is key and ensures that we work effectively together to come up with the best possible solution for ClearAds customers and our members.”
Alison Lee Director of ClearAds and Free TV Commercial Operations
“The disaster recovery work 4mation completed means that Free TV is confident that there is minimal downtime and impact on the business due to the website/server being unavailable. It means that Free TV business continuity is assured.”
Camryn Turner Director of Finance, Free TV
The challenge
We work with ClearAds on two critical portals:
1. Oasis is their customer-facing portal. It is used by agencies and advertisers to submit new advertisements for ClearAds to review and monitor. It is also used to track existing submissions.
2. Tribe is an internal platform that allows ClearAds staff to manage work internally and view applications for review. This system allows ClearAds to constantly keep customers informed and updated on the progress of their applications.
Our regular sprint planning with the ClearAds team means that the Oasis and Tribe systems are regularly maintained and updated to fit the needs of the business. We work with ClearAds to provide security enhancements on both platforms, ensuring system stability for ClearAds and, ultimately, business continuity.
Implementing disaster recovery
Another major part of our work is working with ClearAds and Free TV on their primary infrastructure stacks – implementing systems independent from their primary infrastructure stack with fully automated failover.
Terabytes of data are hosted on Free TV’s and ClearAds infrastructure, therefore we needed to protect these assets from natural disasters or hacking by backing up these assets on another system.
The solution was to create a multi availability zone (AZ) database so that two instances run independently, and if one fails, it automatically switches to the other. The two zones are constantly synchronising so that copies of assets exist in multiple regions.
We also implemented tools to identify and correct the issue in the case of a disaster. The restoration of services back to the local zone can be triggered and completed within 30 minutes, with minimal impact to end-users.
Technologies
Their disaster recovery infrastructure runs an entirely standalone application stack in AWS Singapore. The technologies chosen enable better manageability and minimal post-release issues.
| Technology | How was the technology used? |
| AWS cloud services + Terraform | Terraform enables us to develop the whole data infrastructure as code (IaC), allowing us to deploy multiple environments as needed and easily take them down. Terraform reduces infrastructure costs massively when combined with AWS autoscaling. |
| AWS Lambda | Automates BAU operations |
| AWS Lambda in Node.js | Used to monitor infrastructure and application service availability and health across AWS regions and automatically failover all systems to standby instances. |
| Other Services | S3, API Gateways, EC2, VPC peering, Pinpoint SMS, SES, SNS, Opsgenie |
The result
We are committed to providing innovative suggestions to ClearAds. We will continue to implement user feedback for both their Oasis and Tribe portals.
Both Free TV and ClearAds have systems independent and isolated from their primary infrastructure stack with fully automated failover. Moreover, this enables Free TV’s business to be fully operational in the event of a large-scale AWS outage and guarantees 99.99% uptime of services.
Our work has solidified our long-standing relationship with ClearAds and Free TV. Built on trust, communication, and also thorough understanding of business goals.
