IST Lunch Bunch
Internet advertising is a huge and growing industry with many interesting and challenging engineering problems. This talk first reviews the evolution of optimization paradigms adopted for online advertising from 1998 to 2015. Thereafter we discuss methods for how to describe online advertising as a high-dimensional dynamical system, and how on top of this to apply conventional engineering principles for control and optimization. We show how this on-the-surface non-standard engineering problem on a proper abstraction level can be represented in terms that engineers are familiar with. In the process of developing a model that describes the dynamics, we highlight unique aspects of the system, making it challenging as well as inviting for further research. The challenges involve non-linearities, time-variability, randomness, uncertainties, latency, and coupling effects. We finally sketch on a solution for advertising campaign optimization, where the objective is to deliver an advertising budget smoothly throughout a campaign flight at the smallest possible cost to the advertiser.