Audience Prospecting for Dynamic-Product-Ads in Native Advertising

With yearly revenue exceeding one billion USD, Yahoo Gemini native advertising marketplace serves more than two billion impressions daily to hundreds of millions of unique users. One of the fastest growing segments of Gemini native is dynamic-product-ads (DPA), where major advertisers, such as Amazon and Walmart, provide catalogs with millions of products for the system to choose from and present to users. The subject of this work is finding and expanding the right audience for each DPA ad, which is one of the many challenges DPA presents. Approaches such as targeting various user groups, e.g., users who already visited the advertisers' websites (Retargeting), users that searched for certain products (Search-Prospecting), or users that reside in preferred locations (Location-Prospecting), have limited audience expansion capabilities. In this work we present two new approaches for audience expansion that also maintain predefined performance goals. The Conversion-Prospecting approach predicts DPA conversion rates based on Gemini native logged data, and calculates the expected cost-per-action (CPA) for determining users' eligibility to products and optimizing DPA bids in Gemini native auctions. To support new advertisers and products, the Trending-Prospecting approach matches trending products to users by learning their tendency towards products from advertisers' sites logged events. The tendency scores indicate the popularity of the product and the similarity of the user to those who have previously engaged with this product. The two new prospecting approaches were tested online, serving real Gemini native traffic, demonstrating impressive DPA delivery and DPA revenue lifts while maintaining most traffic within the acceptable CPA range (i.e., performance goal). After a successful testing phase, the proposed approaches are currently in production and serve all Gemini native traffic.Comment: In Proc. IeeeBigData'2023 (Industry and Government Program

Challenges of caring for children with mental disorders: Experiences and views of caregivers attending the outpatient clinic at Muhimbili National Hospital, Dar es Salaam - Tanzania

It is estimated that world-wide up to 20 % of children suffer from debilitating mental illness. Mental disorders that pose a significant concern include learning disorders, hyperkinetic disorders (ADHD), depression, psychosis, pervasive development disorders, attachment disorders, anxiety disorders, conduct disorder, substance abuse and eating disorders. Living with such children can be very stressful for caregivers in the family. Therefore, determination of challenges of living with these children is important in the process of finding ways to help or support caregivers to provide proper care for their children. The purpose of this study was to explore the psychological and emotional, social, and economic challenges that parents or guardians experience when caring for mentally ill children and what they do to address or deal with them. A qualitative study design using in-depth interviews and focus group discussions was applied. The study was conducted at the psychiatric unit of Muhimbili National Hospital in Tanzania. Two focus groups discussions (FGDs) and 8 in-depth interviews were conducted with caregivers who attended the psychiatric clinic with their children. Data analysis was done using content analysis. The study revealed psychological and emotional, social, and economic challenges caregivers endure while living with mentally ill children. Psychological and emotional challenges included being stressed by caring tasks and having worries about the present and future life of their children. They had feelings of sadness, and inner pain or bitterness due to the disturbing behaviour of the children. They also experienced some communication problems with their children due to their inability to talk. Social challenges were inadequate social services for their children, stigma, burden of caring task, lack of public awareness of mental illness, lack of social support, and problems with social life. The economic challenges were poverty, child care interfering with various income generating activities in the family, and extra expenses associated with the child's illness. Caregivers of mentally ill children experience various psychological and emotional, social, and economic challenges. Professional assistance, public awareness of mental illnesses in children, social support by the government, private sector, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are important in addressing these challenges

Social networks of adults with an intellectual disability from south Asian and white communities in the United Kingdom: a comparison

Background: Little research exists comparing the social networks of people with intellectual disability (ID) from south Asian and white backgrounds. This UK study reports on the barriers that south Asian people with ID face in relation to social inclusion compared to their white counterparts. Materials and Methods: A mixed-methods research design was adopted to explore the social lives of 27 men (15 white; 12 South Asian) and 20 women (10 white; 10 South Asian with ID). Descriptive and parametric tests were used to analyse the quantitative data. Results: The average network size of the whole group was 32 members. South Asian participants had more family members whilst white participants had more service users and staff in their networks; 96% network members from white ID group were also of white background, whilst the south Asian group had mixed ethnic network members. Conclusions: Social networks of individuals with ID in this study were found to be larger overall in comparison to previous studies, whilst network structure differed between the white and south Asian population. These differences have implications relating to future service planning and appropriateness of available facilities

Staff and Consumer Attitudes toward Integration of Persons with Psychiatric Disability into the Community

In the last two decades, we have witnessed a significant change in the quality of life and social participation of people with psychiatric disabilities. This article examines staff's and consumers' attitudes toward inclusion of persons with psychiatric disabilities, to understand whether the two groups see eye to eye regarding this important goal. The sample included 88 persons with psychiatric disabilities living in six community settings in the north of Israel, and their 54 direct and supervising staff. The findings showed that the two groups had similar favorable attitudes toward inclusion, except in the empowerment factor, where consumers' attitudes were more favorable. In addition, professional staff showed more positive attitudes toward inclusion than non-professional direct staff