30. A computer-readable medium that stores computer-executable instructions, comprising: instructions for estimating quality scores associated with a set of advertisements using a statistical model where quality scores do not include a click through rate (CTR); instructions for disabling a first subset of advertisements of the set of advertisements based on the estimated quality scores; instructions for ranking advertisements of a second subset of advertisements, based on the estimated quality scores, to order the second subset of advertisements, where the second subset of advertisements comprises the set of advertisements minus the first subset of advertisements; instructions for promoting one or more of the ranked second subset of advertisements based on the estimated quality scores; and instructions for positioning the promoted one or more advertisements of the ranked second subset of advertisements in a first position on a document and positioning unpromoted advertisements of the ranked subset of advertisements in a second position on the document that is different than the first position.
31. A system, comprising: means for determining quality scores associated with a group of advertisements using a statistical model, where quality scores do not include a click through rate (CTR); means for disabling a first subset of advertisements of the first group of advertisements based on the determined quality scores; means for ranking advertisements of a second subset of advertisements of the group of advertisements, based on the determined quality scores, to order the second subset of advertisements; means for promoting one or more of the ranked second subset of advertisements based on the estimated quality scores; and means for positioning the promoted one or more advertisements of the ranked second subset of advertisements in a more prominent position on a document than unpromoted advertisements of the ranked second subset of advertisements.
Description
BACKGROUND
[0001] 1. Field of the Invention
[0002] Implementations described herein relate generally to on-line advertisements and, more particularly, to using estimated ad qualities for filtering, ranking and promoting on-line advertisements.
[0003] 2. Description of Related Art
[0004] On-line advertising systems host advertisements that may advertise various services and/or products. Such advertisements may be presented to users accessing documents hosted by the advertising system, or to users issuing search queries for searching a corpus of documents. An advertisement may include a “creative,” which includes text, graphics and/or images associated with the advertised service and/or product. The advertisement may further include a link to an ad “landing document” which contains further details about the advertised service(s) and/or product(s). When a particular creative appears to be of interest to a user, the user may select (or click) the creative, and the associated link causes a user’s web browser to visit the “landing document” associated with the creative and associated link. This selection of an advertising creative and associated link by a user is referred to hereinafter as a “click.”
[0005] On-line advertising systems often track ad clicks for billing and other purposes. One non-billing purpose for tracking ad clicks is to attempt to ascertain advertisement quality. The click through rate (CTR) is a measure used to determine advertisement quality. CTR represents the fraction of times a given ad gets “clicked” on when a given advertisement is presented to users. The CTR of an advertisement, however, is an imperfect measure of advertisement quality since it focuses on the advertisement creative rather than the object of that advertisement, which is the landing document. A user needs to click on an advertisement in order to determine if an advertisement is good or bad and, therefore, the occurrence/non-occurrence of a click is insufficient to determine the quality of an advertisement. Some advertisements receive many clicks because they have a good creative, but the landing document is completely unsatisfying, or irrelevant, to the user. Other advertisements receive very few clicks (e.g., due to the advertisement creative being poor), but every click leads to a satisfied user. Existing determinations of CTR associated with on-line advertisements, thus, provide imperfect measures of advertisement quality.
[0006] Furthermore, in existing on-line advertising systems, the advertisements that are displayed to users, and the ordering of the advertisements displayed to the users, are based solely on an advertisement’s CTR and the max “cost per click” (CPC) that an advertiser is willing to bid to have its advertisement shown. The CPC is the amount that an advertiser is willing to pay an advertisement publisher and is based on a number of selections (e.g., clicks) that a specific advertisement receives. To the extent that CTR is being used as a surrogate for advertisement quality, it is insufficient for the reasons already set forth. Existing mechanisms for determining which advertisements to display, and for ranking the advertisements, thus, use an imperfect measure of advertisement quality that may not provide the highest quality advertisements to users.
SUMMARY
[0007] According to one aspect, a method may include obtaining a first parameter associated with a quality of an advertisement among multiple advertisements, where the first quality parameter does not include a click through rate. The method may further include functionally combining the first quality parameter with at least one other parameter and using the functional combination to filter, rank or promote the advertisement among the plurality of advertisements.
[0008] According to another aspect, a method may include obtaining ratings associated with a first group of advertisements, where the ratings indicate a quality of the first group of advertisements. The method may further include observing multiple different user actions associated with user selection of advertisements of the first group of advertisements and deriving a statistical model using the observed user actions and the obtained ratings. The method may also include using the statistical model to estimate quality scores associated with a second group of advertisements and providing a subset of advertisements of the second group of advertisements to a user based on the estimated quality scores.
[0009] According to a further aspect, a method may include determining quality scores associated with a set of advertisements using a statistical model where the quality scores do not include a click through rate (CTR). The method may also include disabling a first subset of advertisements of the set of advertisements based on the determined quality scores and providing a second subset of the set of advertisements to a user, where the second subset of the set of advertisements comprises the first set of advertisements minus the first subset of advertisements.
[0010] According to an additional aspect, a method may include determining quality scores associated with a set of advertisements using a statistical model, where the quality scores do not include a click through rate (CTR). The method may further include ranking advertisements of the set of advertisements based on the determined quality scores to determine a ranked order.
[0011] According to another aspect, a method may include determining quality scores associated with a group of advertisements using a statistical model, where the quality scores do not include a click through rate (CTR). The method may further include promoting one or more advertisements of the group of advertisements based on the determined quality scores, positioning the promoted one or more advertisements of the group of advertisements in a prominent position on a document, and positioning unpromoted advertisements of the group of advertisements in a less prominent position on the document than the promoted one or more advertisements.