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Monitor Drift in Ad Ranking

HardSystem Design00:00
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Problem

Scenario

You are responsible for a deployed ML ranking system for sponsored content in a large consumer app. The model scores ad candidates in real time using user, ad, and context features, and its output directly affects revenue and user experience. Recently, performance has become unstable after upstream schema changes and shifting traffic patterns, and leadership wants a robust way to detect feature drift before it causes business impact. You need to design monitoring that works for both fast-changing online features and slower batch features without creating excessive alert noise.

Scale

SignalValue
DAU45M
Peak ranking QPS220K requests/sec
Candidates scored per request120
Active ad catalog18M ads
Distinct model features350
p99 latency budget120 ms end-to-end
Training data volume2.5B scored impressions/day

Question

How would you design the end-to-end system to monitor feature drift in this deployed ranking stack, including how drift signals are computed, where they live in the architecture, and how they connect to retraining, alerting, rollback, and overall model health evaluation?