Celebrating our First AI-focused Hackathon: 90 Teams, 400+ Participants, and Unstoppable Innovation
The PubMatic Hackathon is the ultimate arena for unleashing creativity and innovation! Designed to foster a culture of innovation and provide a platform where ideas can flourish, the PubMatic hackathon is 2-day, non-stop coding and brainstorming event. During this event everyone challenges themselves, turns their ideas into reality and redefines what’s possible. In the past, Hackathons have led to the creation of many of our successful products – OpenWrap, Identity Hub, to name a few.
In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, staying ahead requires constant innovation. This hackathon aimed to bring together diverse minds from around the globe to tackle pressing challenges, identify new solutions, explore emerging technologies, and build connections with future innovators.
The 10th edition of the PubMatic Hackathon was extraordinary, with incredible energy and commitment from participants. We shattered previous records with 90 teams and over 400 participants, all presenting exceptional projects. The quality and diversity were remarkable, demonstrating profound understanding of the business, technology innovation, and creativity, with many projects nearing production readiness.
A key theme of this year’s Hackathon was how we can use generative AI and machine learning (ML) to solve business problems and enable others to be more effective and productive, with over a third of the submissions incorporating AI and ML. This demonstrates the high degree of exposure to and interest in AI and ML within the engineering team at PubMatic. Teams showcased impressive solutions such as:
- A framework for real-time data aggregation that handles large volumes of data efficiently;
- A cost-effective, self-sustaining solution to simplify A/B testing;
- A real-time stats platform that scales to handle trillions of data points, allowing instant browsing of metrics and trends;
- Tools to empower publishers to optimize and monetize their inventory, boosting ad value and revenue; and
- Use of advanced AI to categorize and analyse video ads, providing better quality checks.
As always, one of the highlights of the event was the cross-functional collaboration that took place. Participants didn’t just work in silos; they engaged with teams across the product, marketing, client services and technical departments, to ensure their solutions were not only innovative but also practical and aligned with our business objectives. This collaborative spirit was key to the event’s success and underscored the importance of teamwork in driving innovation.
In addition to AI and machine learning, the teams employed a variety of cutting-edge technologies, to develop innovative prototypes and solutions.
The competition was fiercely close, with participants setting the bar higher than ever before, and the judges were impressed with the diversity of ideas, end to end demos, and the high-quality presentations.
Looking ahead, we are excited about the future. The Hackathon has ignited a wave of innovation that we’re eager to explore further. We plan to evaluate and potentially integrate the most promising solutions into our production environment to improve customer experience and drive strategic growth.