Re: ad weights
Your first solution would run into the problem of having a huge amount of low ads and few high ones. Lets say a banner system has 8 free ads and 5 paying ones. showing the paying ones multiple times (lets say 5 per) will result in 33 total ads with the free ads having a 3% view rate and the pay having a 15%. Now take it further. 90 free ads and 2 pay ads with the pay ads having the same 5 per. This results in each free ad having 1% and the pay ads having 5%. Pay ads are still higher, but if you look at the full numbers you see that 9 times out of 10 a free ad will be shown. Not very economical. The second also shows the problems of randomness. I'd personally reverse the second some and have 3 categories. The first is free with a 20% chance of showing an ad, the second is affiliate with a 30% chance of showing an ad and the final is pay with a 50% chance of showing an ad. In each category are ads which will be randomly displayed, but the overall chance of getting one category over another is set. I recently set up two photo galleries using two different mechanisms. The first used ratings (iTunes style) to prioritize.5 stars meant 5 times the frequency of a 1 star photo.That worked well.I cached a list of Ids (with 5 star photos being listed 5 times), in the app scope, picked an index at random when I needed an image, and then used the ID at that index to fetch the actual image data.That way I didn't have to store the image data 5 times for 5 star photos.This works well for screensaver or slideshow type apps, where you just want a random photo, and you want one you like more often than not. The second organized the photos into directories (conceptually, at least). To select a photo, first a directory was selected at random (no weighting), and then an image was selected from that directory at random (again, with no weighting).You could certainly weight the categories differently, and even the individual items, but that's a lot of nastiness, potentially.This works well if you want to control distribution across the categories, but not necessarily individual images. I think the latter is basically what you're describing at the end of your message. Cheers, barneyb -Original Message- From: Michael Dinowitz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2004 2:08 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: ad weights Here's a fun task. I'm building pay per click ads for HoF (in place of banner ads and yes, the list ads are coming off). One thing is that I need to give each ad a weight in relation to another to show how often it should come up. I've thought of a few ideas and wanted to hear what others think. Basically, there's a table of ads that's dumped into an application array for caching. The question is, how to dump the ads in order to give 'high paying' ads more show than 'low paying' (or free) ads. This is one idea: When this table is dumped into an application array, a position in the array is given for each ad for each dollar (or part) it has. .01 is 1 position. $1 is 1 position. $1.01 is 2 positions. This is rather simple and works well for small amounts of ads, but when you get a lot, it fails. ex: 99 ads at .01 and 1 ad at $5 will equal an array of 104 items. The big paying ad has a greater chance of being seen in relation to any other ad, but is buried under all the low paying ads. Another idea is to have sub arrays for each price grouping. In this example, the chances of a $5 text ad coming up is far greater than a $1 ad and if a $5 comes up, then it'll be one of several $5 ads. This may work and I'm building it now. Critique? [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings]
RE: ad weights
An idea that I had may be to hold some sort of structure with the ad information and a value for priority.Each time the ad is shown (by random selection), the priority gets bumped down one. (ie. Priority starts at 5 for an expensive ad meaning it gets shown 5 times for every 1 time that a cheap ad is shown)Once it hits 0 it's removed from the struct altogether to ensure that all ads get shown.Once all ads have been shown and there's nothing left in the structure, you would re-query the original ad list and reset the priority number and start all over again. Ads -adID -adLink -adImage -adPriority This should support a ton of ads and give a sure-fire way for everyone to be seen and not put it at chance that the cheap ads might get seen in between all of the expensive ads, however, the expensive ones would still get seen more often. John Burns -Original Message- From: Michael Dinowitz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2004 5:08 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: ad weights Here's a fun task. I'm building pay per click ads for HoF (in place of banner ads and yes, the list ads are coming off). One thing is that I need to give each ad a weight in relation to another to show how often it should come up. I've thought of a few ideas and wanted to hear what others think. Basically, there's a table of ads that's dumped into an application array for caching. The question is, how to dump the ads in order to give 'high paying' ads more show than 'low paying' (or free) ads. This is one idea: When this table is dumped into an application array, a position in the array is given for each ad for each dollar (or part) it has. .01 is 1 position. $1 is 1 position. $1.01 is 2 positions. This is rather simple and works well for small amounts of ads, but when you get a lot, it fails. ex: 99 ads at .01 and 1 ad at $5 will equal an array of 104 items. The big paying ad has a greater chance of being seen in relation to any other ad, but is buried under all the low paying ads. Another idea is to have sub arrays for each price grouping. In this example, the chances of a $5 text ad coming up is far greater than a $1 ad and if a $5 comes up, then it'll be one of several $5 ads. This may work and I'm building it now. Critique? -- Michael Dinowitz House of Fusion http://www.houseoffusion.com Finding technical solutions to the problems you didn't know you had yet [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings]
RE: ad weights
Just thought I would throw out a different angle... Instead of assigning weights to each ad, why not assign it to a weight range? For instance, your cheapest ad is $.01 and your biggest ad is $10.00 (which is constantly in flux). Take the range and divide it into however many groups you want, say 10 for consistency's sake. Then come up with a priority algorithm for the 10 groups (taking into account a possible 0 ads in a group). So your ad at $4.01 would be in group 5, but if the top got bumped up to $10.10 it would bump it down to group 4. So your example of 99 $.01 and one $5 ad would show a high priority to the $5 ad and a lesser chance to be seen at the $.01 rate as group 1 would not have as much exposure. Ryan Kime mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web Developer Webco Industries -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2004 4:08 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: ad weights Here's a fun task. I'm building pay per click ads for HoF (in place of banner ads and yes, the list ads are coming off). One thing is that I need to give each ad a weight in relation to another to show how often it should come up. I've thought of a few ideas and wanted to hear what others think. Basically, there's a table of ads that's dumped into an application array for caching. The question is, how to dump the ads in order to give 'high paying' ads more show than 'low paying' (or free) ads. This is one idea: When this table is dumped into an application array, a position in the array is given for each ad for each dollar (or part) it has. .01 is 1 position. $1 is 1 position. $1.01 is 2 positions. This is rather simple and works well for small amounts of ads, but when you get a lot, it fails. ex: 99 ads at .01 and 1 ad at $5 will equal an array of 104 items. The big paying ad has a greater chance of being seen in relation to any other ad, but is buried under all the low paying ads. Another idea is to have sub arrays for each price grouping. In this example, the chances of a $5 text ad coming up is far greater than a $1 ad and if a $5 comes up, then it'll be one of several $5 ads. This may work and I'm building it now. Critique? -- Michael Dinowitz House of Fusion http://www.houseoffusion.com Finding technical solutions to the problems you didn't know you had yet _ [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings]
Re: ad weights
- Original Message - From: Michael Dinowitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: CF-Talk [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, May 19, 2004 1:03 AM Subject: Re: ad weights Your first solution would run into the problem of having a huge amount of low ads and few high ones. Lets say a banner system has 8 free ads and 5 paying ones. showing the paying ones multiple times (lets say 5 per) will result in 33 total ads with the free ads having a 3% view rate and the pay having a 15%. Now take it further. 90 free ads and 2 pay ads with the pay ads having the same 5 per. This results in each free ad having 1% and the pay ads having 5%. Pay ads are still higher, but if you look at the full numbers you see that 9 times out of 10 a free ad will be shown. Not very economical. Neither were suggestions of how you should weight your ads, just how you might approach it.Probably the only monkey wrench in your situation are the free ads and the fact that a large number of them can take up a disproportianate percentage of your rotation.I think you've got two basic approaches. One, weight the paying ads very very heavily in relation to non-paying ads.For instance: Ad_IDPriceWeight - 1 $0.001 2 $0.055000 3 $0.001 4 $0.011000 5 $5.0050 6 $0.2525000 But you can still run into the problem of a very large number of the free ads taking up perhaps more views in the rotation than you like.If that happened you'd have to go through and further bump up the weighting of the pay ads. The second approach (which you hinted at in your original posting) would be to make the weighting hierarchical.In your case you'd probably just need two levels.At the first level create two 'groups' - paying and non-paying ads.Throw all free ads into one group.You could weight the ads within the free group in relation to each other, but it's probably unnecessary and every ad could have an equal weight of '1'. Into the second group, have your paying ads, weighted relative only to other ads in the same group.Here you could probably just use a weighting in proportion to the price of each - a $1.00 ad with a weight 10x that of a $0.10 ad, for example. Then weight the groups relative to each other.Say paying ads 75%, non-paying 25% (or whatever).Then it doesn't matter how many non-paying ads you have, they always take up a known percentage of the views in your rotation.You're algorithm would make two picks - first select a group, then select an ad within the group. [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings]
Re: ad weights
I think you need to provide more information. It is easy enough to order ads based on some sort of weight, but how does that weight change after the ad is served? Should an expensive ad be served twice as many times as an inexpensive ad? Three times? What about a moderately priced ad? Should it be served twice as many times as an inexpensive ad, but half as much as an expensive ad? -Matt On May 18, 2004, at 5:08 PM, Michael Dinowitz wrote: Here's a fun task. I'm building pay per click ads for HoF (in place of banner ads and yes, the list ads are coming off). One thing is that I need to give each ad a weight in relation to another to show how often it should come up. I've thought of a few ideas and wanted to hear what others think. Basically, there's a table of ads that's dumped into an application array for caching. The question is, how to dump the ads in order to give 'high paying' ads more show than 'low paying' (or free) ads. This is one idea: When this table is dumped into an application array, a position in the array is given for each ad for each dollar (or part) it has. .01 is 1 position. $1 is 1 position. $1.01 is 2 positions. This is rather simple and works well for small amounts of ads, but when you get a lot, it fails. ex: 99 ads at .01 and 1 ad at $5 will equal an array of 104 items. The big paying ad has a greater chance of being seen in relation to any other ad, but is buried under all the low paying ads. Another idea is to have sub arrays for each price grouping. In this example, the chances of a $5 text ad coming up is far greater than a $1 ad and if a $5 comes up, then it'll be one of several $5 ads. This may work and I'm building it now. Critique? -- Michael Dinowitz House of Fusion http://www.houseoffusion.com Finding technical solutions to the problems you didn't know you had yet [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings]
RE: ad weights
I recently set up two photo galleries using two different mechanisms. The first used ratings (iTunes style) to prioritize.5 stars meant 5 times the frequency of a 1 star photo.That worked well.I cached a list of Ids (with 5 star photos being listed 5 times), in the app scope, picked an index at random when I needed an image, and then used the ID at that index to fetch the actual image data.That way I didn't have to store the image data 5 times for 5 star photos.This works well for screensaver or slideshow type apps, where you just want a random photo, and you want one you like more often than not. The second organized the photos into directories (conceptually, at least). To select a photo, first a directory was selected at random (no weighting), and then an image was selected from that directory at random (again, with no weighting).You could certainly weight the categories differently, and even the individual items, but that's a lot of nastiness, potentially.This works well if you want to control distribution across the categories, but not necessarily individual images. I think the latter is basically what you're describing at the end of your message. Cheers, barneyb -Original Message- From: Michael Dinowitz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2004 2:08 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: ad weights Here's a fun task. I'm building pay per click ads for HoF (in place of banner ads and yes, the list ads are coming off). One thing is that I need to give each ad a weight in relation to another to show how often it should come up. I've thought of a few ideas and wanted to hear what others think. Basically, there's a table of ads that's dumped into an application array for caching. The question is, how to dump the ads in order to give 'high paying' ads more show than 'low paying' (or free) ads. This is one idea: When this table is dumped into an application array, a position in the array is given for each ad for each dollar (or part) it has. .01 is 1 position. $1 is 1 position. $1.01 is 2 positions. This is rather simple and works well for small amounts of ads, but when you get a lot, it fails. ex: 99 ads at .01 and 1 ad at $5 will equal an array of 104 items. The big paying ad has a greater chance of being seen in relation to any other ad, but is buried under all the low paying ads. Another idea is to have sub arrays for each price grouping. In this example, the chances of a $5 text ad coming up is far greater than a $1 ad and if a $5 comes up, then it'll be one of several $5 ads. This may work and I'm building it now. Critique? [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings]
Re: ad weights
caching. The question is, how to dump the ads in order to give 'high paying' ads more show than 'low paying' (or free) ads. This is one idea: When this table is dumped into an application array, a position in the array is given for each ad for each dollar (or part) it has. .01 is 1 position. $1 is 1 position. $1.01 is 2 positions. This is rather simple and works well for small amounts of ads, but when you get a lot, it fails. ex: 99 ads at .01 and 1 ad at $5 will equal an array of 104 items. The big paying ad has a greater chance of being seen in relation to any other ad, but is buried under all the low paying ads. A variation on this would be to have an array of structs like this: ads[n] [min] [max] [ad_stuff] Where min and max are the minimum and maximum values where your random number will hit (for random number n, display this ad if min=n=max). Then you can do a binary or smart search, which will be pretty fast. Cache the result for 15 or 30 (or 5) seconds in the application scope, and you'll avoid having to do the search (the slow bit) too often (just a simple time compare). Another idea is to have sub arrays for each price grouping. In this example, the chances of a $5 text ad coming up is far greater than a $1 ad and if a $5 comes up, then it'll be one of several $5 ads. This may work and I'm building it now. Critique? Without knowing how you plan on weighting the dollar values, I can't comment too much. However, you could do something similar to what I've listed above. Another idea might be instead of min/max wieghting (by probability) you create an actual hard number of displays per cycle where a cycle includes all the assigned displays of all ads.That is, instead of a min and max, you have a displaycount, and you decrement it every time that ad is displayed.When it hits 0, remove the array row.When the array is empty, refresh it. --BenD [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings]
RE: ad weights
One real simple idea would be to add the weighted ads to your array X times in random slots. Then all you have to decide is how many times you want the add to show up value of X. This maybe way too simple for the complexity of what this ad system sounds like. Mark W. Breneman -Cold Fusion Developer -Network Administrator Vivid Media [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.vividmedia.com 608.270.9770 _ From: Michael Dinowitz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2004 4:08 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: ad weights Here's a fun task. I'm building pay per click ads for HoF (in place of banner ads and yes, the list ads are coming off). One thing is that I need to give each ad a weight in relation to another to show how often it should come up. I've thought of a few ideas and wanted to hear what others think. Basically, there's a table of ads that's dumped into an application array for caching. The question is, how to dump the ads in order to give 'high paying' ads more show than 'low paying' (or free) ads. This is one idea: When this table is dumped into an application array, a position in the array is given for each ad for each dollar (or part) it has. .01 is 1 position. $1 is 1 position. $1.01 is 2 positions. This is rather simple and works well for small amounts of ads, but when you get a lot, it fails. ex: 99 ads at .01 and 1 ad at $5 will equal an array of 104 items. The big paying ad has a greater chance of being seen in relation to any other ad, but is buried under all the low paying ads. Another idea is to have sub arrays for each price grouping. In this example, the chances of a $5 text ad coming up is far greater than a $1 ad and if a $5 comes up, then it'll be one of several $5 ads. This may work and I'm building it now. Critique? -- Michael Dinowitz House of Fusion http://www.houseoffusion.com Finding technical solutions to the problems you didn't know you had yet _ [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings]
RE: ad weights
Another issue that commonly comes up in rotation is the volume of traffic/views. The weight doesn't serve much of a purpose unless it' compared to the aggregation of traffic totals. At least (I believe) that's how the heavies do it (Doubleclick, etc.) I think they track traffic for an arbitrary period (lets say 7 days)and use that value as a basis for weighting the ad distribution. Erik Yowell [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.shortfusemedia.com -Original Message- From: Michael Dinowitz [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2004 2:08 PM To: CF-Talk Subject: ad weights Here's a fun task. I'm building pay per click ads for HoF (in place of banner ads and yes, the list ads are coming off). One thing is that I need to give each ad a weight in relation to another to show how often it should come up. I've thought of a few ideas and wanted to hear what others think. Basically, there's a table of ads that's dumped into an application array for caching. The question is, how to dump the ads in order to give 'high paying' ads more show than 'low paying' (or free) ads. This is one idea: When this table is dumped into an application array, a position in the array is given for each ad for each dollar (or part) it has. .01 is 1 position. $1 is 1 position. $1.01 is 2 positions. This is rather simple and works well for small amounts of ads, but when you get a lot, it fails. ex: 99 ads at .01 and 1 ad at $5 will equal an array of 104 items. The big paying ad has a greater chance of being seen in relation to any other ad, but is buried under all the low paying ads. Another idea is to have sub arrays for each price grouping. In this example, the chances of a $5 text ad coming up is far greater than a $1 ad and if a $5 comes up, then it'll be one of several $5 ads. This may work and I'm building it now. Critique? -- Michael Dinowitz House of Fusion http://www.houseoffusion.com Finding technical solutions to the problems you didn't know you had yet _ [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings]
Re: ad weights
- Original Message - From: Michael Dinowitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: CF-Talk [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2004 3:08 PM Subject: ad weights Here's a fun task. I'm building pay per click ads for HoF (in place of banner ads and yes, the list ads are coming off). One thing is that I need to give each ad a weight in relation to another to show how often it should come up. I've thought of a few ideas and wanted to hear what others think. Basically, there's a table of ads that's dumped into an application array for caching. The question is, how to dump the ads in order to give 'high paying' ads more show than 'low paying' (or free) ads. This is one idea: When this table is dumped into an application array, a position in the array is given for each ad for each dollar (or part) it has. .01 is 1 position. $1 is 1 position. $1.01 is 2 positions. This is rather simple and works well for small amounts of ads, but when you get a lot, it fails. ex: 99 ads at .01 and 1 ad at $5 will equal an array of 104 items. The big paying ad has a greater chance of being seen in relation to any other ad, but is buried under all the low paying ads. Another idea is to have sub arrays for each price grouping. In this example, the chances of a $5 text ad coming up is far greater than a $1 ad and if a $5 comes up, then it'll be one of several $5 ads. This may work and I'm building it now. Critique? You've got two problems.First, how to represent the data so that you can easily (and quikly) grab an ad according to some weighting scheme. Secondly, coming up with the weighting scheme itself. Don't use an approach where you populate an array, list or table with some number of duplicate records relative to a weighting.This gets kinda silly.If you had just two ads, for instance, the first of which you want to come up 100 times as often as the other, you end up with 101 records that represent just two entities. Here's one approach:Assuming the weights you store are relative, you generate two numbers for each ad. Say you start with the following in your database: Ad_IDWeight 175 21 325 410 55 Your generated data structure would look like Ad_IDRange_BegRange_End --- 11 75 27676 377101 4102111 5112116 To pull up a random ad according to its weight, generate a random number between 1 and 116 and see which record owns the number.If you stored the above as a cached query, then you could use a query of a query to grab one. SELECT Ad_ID FROM cached_ad_qry WHERE #RandRange(1, 116)# BETWEEN Range_Beg AND Range_End As far as the weighting scheme itself goes... The biggest question is probably whether you want the weighting to be directly proportional to the price paid.For example: Ad_IDPriceWeight - 1$5.00500 2$0.011 3$0.2525 4$0.1010 5$0.055 If you _don't_ want to weight proportionately to the price, you'll need to come up with a way to shift the weighting, but you still probably want to base it on pricing.You might do something like Ad Price RangeWeight - $0.001 $0.01 - $0.022 $0.03 - $0.103 $0.11 - $0.505 $0.51 - $0.9910 $1.00 - $1.9918 $2.00 - $4.9930 $5.00+ 50 or Ad Price RangeWeight - $0.001 $0.01 - $0.991.75 * (price * 100) $1.00 - $2.001.50 * (price * 100) $2.01 - $3.001.25 * (price * 100) $3.00+ 1.00 * (price * 100) I have no idea how either of these particular weighting schemes would work out for you, but it should give you some ideas. [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings]
Re: ad weights
Jim Rocks! At 04:25 PM 5/18/04, you wrote: - Original Message - From: Michael Dinowitz [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: CF-Talk [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, May 18, 2004 3:08 PM Subject: ad weights up, then it'll be one of several $5 ads. This may work and I'm building it now. Critique? You've got two problems.First, how to represent the data so that you can easily (and quikly) grab an ad according to some weighting scheme. Secondly, coming up with the weighting scheme itself. Don't use an approach where you populate an array, list or table with some number of duplicate records relative to a weighting.This gets kinda silly.If you had just two ads, for instance, the first of which you want to come up 100 times as often as the other, you end up with 101 records that represent just two entities. Here's one approach:Assuming the weights you store are relative, you generate two numbers for each ad. Say you start with the following in your database: Ad_IDWeight 175 21 325 410 55 Your generated data structure would look like Ad_IDRange_BegRange_End --- 11 75 27676 377101 4102111 5112116 To pull up a random ad according to its weight, generate a random number between 1 and 116 and see which record owns the number.If you stored the above as a cached query, then you could use a query of a query to grab one. SELECT Ad_ID FROM cached_ad_qry WHERE #RandRange(1, 116)# BETWEEN Range_Beg AND Range_End As far as the weighting scheme itself goes... The biggest question is probably whether you want the weighting to be directly proportional to the price paid.For example: Ad_IDPriceWeight - 1$5.00500 2$0.011 3$0.2525 4$0.1010 5$0.055 If you _don't_ want to weight proportionately to the price, you'll need to come up with a way to shift the weighting, but you still probably want to base it on pricing.You might do something like Ad Price RangeWeight - $0.001 $0.01 - $0.022 $0.03 - $0.103 $0.11 - $0.505 $0.51 - $0.9910 $1.00 - $1.9918 $2.00 - $4.9930 $5.00+ 50 or Ad Price RangeWeight - $0.001 $0.01 - $0.991.75 * (price * 100) $1.00 - $2.001.50 * (price * 100) $2.01 - $3.001.25 * (price * 100) $3.00+ 1.00 * (price * 100) I have no idea how either of these particular weighting schemes would work out for you, but it should give you some ideas. [Todays Threads] [This Message] [Subscription] [Fast Unsubscribe] [User Settings]
