46,972 research outputs found
Lift-Based Bidding in Ad Selection
Real-time bidding (RTB) has become one of the largest online advertising
markets in the world. Today the bid price per ad impression is typically
decided by the expected value of how it can lead to a desired action event
(e.g., registering an account or placing a purchase order) to the advertiser.
However, this industry standard approach to decide the bid price does not
consider the actual effect of the ad shown to the user, which should be
measured based on the performance lift among users who have been or have not
been exposed to a certain treatment of ads. In this paper, we propose a new
bidding strategy and prove that if the bid price is decided based on the
performance lift rather than absolute performance value, advertisers can
actually gain more action events. We describe the modeling methodology to
predict the performance lift and demonstrate the actual performance gain
through blind A/B test with real ad campaigns in an industry-leading
Demand-Side Platform (DSP). We also discuss the relationship between
attribution models and bidding strategies. We prove that, to move the DSPs to
bid based on performance lift, they should be rewarded according to the
relative performance lift they contribute.Comment: AAAI 201
Multi-Touch Attribution Based Budget Allocation in Online Advertising
Budget allocation in online advertising deals with distributing the campaign
(insertion order) level budgets to different sub-campaigns which employ
different targeting criteria and may perform differently in terms of
return-on-investment (ROI). In this paper, we present the efforts at Turn on
how to best allocate campaign budget so that the advertiser or campaign-level
ROI is maximized. To do this, it is crucial to be able to correctly determine
the performance of sub-campaigns. This determination is highly related to the
action-attribution problem, i.e. to be able to find out the set of ads, and
hence the sub-campaigns that provided them to a user, that an action should be
attributed to. For this purpose, we employ both last-touch (last ad gets all
credit) and multi-touch (many ads share the credit) attribution methodologies.
We present the algorithms deployed at Turn for the attribution problem, as well
as their parallel implementation on the large advertiser performance datasets.
We conclude the paper with our empirical comparison of last-touch and
multi-touch attribution-based budget allocation in a real online advertising
setting.Comment: This paper has been published in ADKDD 2014, August 24, New York
City, New York, U.S.
Multichannel in a complex world
The proliferation of devices and channels has brought new challenges to just about every
organisation in delivering consistently good customer experiences and effectively joining up
service provision with marketing activity, data and content. A good multichannel strategy and
execution is increasingly becoming essential to marketers and customer experience
professionals from every sector. This report seeks to identify the key issues, challenges and opportunities that surround
multichannel and provide some best practice insight and principles on the elements that are
key to multichannel success. As part of the research for this report, we spoke to six
experienced customer experience and marketing practitioners from large organisations
across different sectors.
In Multichannel Marketing: Metrics and Methods for On and Offline Success, Akin Arikan
(2008) said:
‘Because customers are multichannel beings and demand relevant, consistent experiences
across all channels, businesses need to adopt a multichannel mind-set when listening to
their customers.’
It was clear from the companies interviewed for this report that it remains challenging for
many organisations to maintain consistency across so many customer touchpoints. Not only
that, but the ability to balance consistency with the capability to fully exploit the unique
attributes of each channel remains an aspiration for many.
The proliferation of devices and digital channels has added complexity to customer journeys,
making issues around the joining up of customer experience and the attribution of value of
key importance to many. Whilst senior leaders within the organisations spoken to seem to be
bought in to multichannel, this buy-in was not always replicated across the rest of the
organisation and did not always translate into a cohesive multichannel strategy. A number of companies were undertaking work around customer journey mapping and
customer segmentation, using a variety of passive and actively collected data in order to
identify specific areas of poor customer experience and create action plans for improvement.
Others were undertaking projects using sophisticated tracking and tagging technologies to
develop an understanding of the value and role of specific channels and to provide better
intelligence to the business on attribution that might be used to inform future investment
decisions.
A consistent barrier to improving customer experience is the ability to join up many different
legacy systems and data in order to provide a single customer view and form the basis for
delivery of a more consistent and cohesive multichannel approach.
Whilst there remain significant challenges around multichannel, there are some useful
technologies allowing businesses to develop better insight into customer motivation and
activity. Nonetheless, delivery of seamless multichannel experience remains a work-inprogress
for many
Multisensory causal inference in the brain
At any given moment, our brain processes multiple inputs from its different sensory modalities (vision, hearing, touch, etc.). In deciphering this array of sensory information, the brain has to solve two problems: (1) which of the inputs originate from the same object and should be integrated and (2) for the sensations originating from the same object, how best to integrate them. Recent behavioural studies suggest that the human brain solves these problems using optimal probabilistic inference, known as Bayesian causal inference. However, how and where the underlying computations are carried out in the brain have remained unknown. By combining neuroimaging-based decoding techniques and computational modelling of behavioural data, a new study now sheds light on how multisensory causal inference maps onto specific brain areas. The results suggest that the complexity of neural computations increases along the visual hierarchy and link specific components of the causal inference process with specific visual and parietal regions
Inefficiencies in Digital Advertising Markets
Digital advertising markets are growing and attracting increased scrutiny. This article explores four market inefficiencies that remain poorly understood: ad effect measurement, frictions between and within advertising channel members, ad blocking, and ad fraud. Although these topics are not unique to digital advertising, each manifests in unique ways in markets for digital ads. The authors identify relevant findings in the academic literature, recent developments in practice, and promising topics for future research
A robot hand testbed designed for enhancing embodiment and functional neurorehabilitation of body schema in subjects with upper limb impairment or loss.
Many upper limb amputees experience an incessant, post-amputation "phantom limb pain" and report that their missing limbs feel paralyzed in an uncomfortable posture. One hypothesis is that efferent commands no longer generate expected afferent signals, such as proprioceptive feedback from changes in limb configuration, and that the mismatch of motor commands and visual feedback is interpreted as pain. Non-invasive therapeutic techniques for treating phantom limb pain, such as mirror visual feedback (MVF), rely on visualizations of postural changes. Advances in neural interfaces for artificial sensory feedback now make it possible to combine MVF with a high-tech "rubber hand" illusion, in which subjects develop a sense of embodiment with a fake hand when subjected to congruent visual and somatosensory feedback. We discuss clinical benefits that could arise from the confluence of known concepts such as MVF and the rubber hand illusion, and new technologies such as neural interfaces for sensory feedback and highly sensorized robot hand testbeds, such as the "BairClaw" presented here. Our multi-articulating, anthropomorphic robot testbed can be used to study proprioceptive and tactile sensory stimuli during physical finger-object interactions. Conceived for artificial grasp, manipulation, and haptic exploration, the BairClaw could also be used for future studies on the neurorehabilitation of somatosensory disorders due to upper limb impairment or loss. A remote actuation system enables the modular control of tendon-driven hands. The artificial proprioception system enables direct measurement of joint angles and tendon tensions while temperature, vibration, and skin deformation are provided by a multimodal tactile sensor. The provision of multimodal sensory feedback that is spatiotemporally consistent with commanded actions could lead to benefits such as reduced phantom limb pain, and increased prosthesis use due to improved functionality and reduced cognitive burden
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