One of most widespread buzzwords of the last two years in the Internet advertising market is “behavioural targeting. The basic idea is that if an advertiser is able to reach a user who seems to be interested in the same products or who is searching for a good which is sold by the advertiser, the probability of a click and of a conversion on the advertiser web site will be much higher

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Putting you first for online advertising www.simply.com
DATA-DRIVEN BEHAVIOURAL
ALGORITHMS
ACM MULTIMEDIA CONFERENCE 2010
FLORENCE

2.
Putting you first for online advertising www.simply.com
What is performance advertising?
Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and
World Wide Web for the expressed purpose of delivering marketing
messages to attract customers.
Wikipedia
ONLINE ADVERTISING = FREE INTERNET
A few examples:
1. Google
2. Facebook
3. Myspace
4. Twitter
5. Mobile apps
6. Online newspapers

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Putting you first for online advertising www.simply.com
Performance Advertising is a new model of online advertising where the
advertiser pays if and only if the target user “reacts” to the promotion
message.
Two macrocategories of performance advertising business models:
1. Pay per click: the advertisers pays if the user clicks on the ad and visits
his site
2. Pay per action: the advertisers pays if the user visits his web site and
executes a defined action, for example a sign up or a purchase
As a consequence, in performance advertising the critical need is to get
the right target of users
What is performance advertising?

4.
Putting you first for online advertising www.simply.com
What is Behavioural Targeting?
One of most widespread buzzwords of the last two
years in the Internet advertising market is
behavioural targeting.
The basic idea is that if an advertiser is able to reach
a user who seems to be interested in the same
products or who is searching for a good which is sold
by the advertiser, the probability of a click and of a
conversion on the advertiser web site will be much
higher
The general strategy of most of these platforms is to
provide audience pixels by a priori human defined
tree categories, not based on performance data

5.
Putting you first for online advertising www.simply.com
Data-driven behavioural algorithm
" As opposed to behavioural targeting which tends to start with a
behavioural theory for advertising performance, Cluster™ targeting
starts from the pure empirical performance of users
" Click through and conversion performances of ads are analysed and
grouped in to different levels
" Each of these groups is then analysed to understand the behavioural
journeys of users across the Simply Network (previous sites visited
and search terms used) and on the site itself

6.
Putting you first for online advertising www.simply.com
Data-driven behavioural algorithm
" Groups are refined according to the relative strength of performance
versus behaviour. If a behaviour group within a cluster shows
particularly strong performance, it is separated in to a new and
unique cluster. This will depend, however, on whether this
performance is more significant than the relative performance of the
parent cluster versus others.
" When a new advertiser signs up to Simply and creates a new
campaign, the campaign is tested using each cluster group
" Performance is analysed over 1-2 days and the highest performing
cluster is assigned to the campaign
" When a new publisher signs up, we analyze the users of his site
and after 4-5 days we assign them to the correct clusters

7.
Putting you first for online advertising www.simply.com
Data-driven behavioural algorithm
" When a new publisher signs up, we analyze the users of his site
and after 4-5 days we assign them to the correct cluster
" The user behaviour on the new site is also analysed to refine the
clusters or develop a new cluster
" Meanwhile clusters are continuously analysed and refined

8.
Putting you first for online advertising www.simply.com
Results
Last 30 days ecpm

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Putting you first for online advertising www.simply.com
Results
Last 30 days CTR

10.
Putting you first for online advertising www.simply.com