GOMCHA European Winners 2016 1. Introduction In the past couple of weeks, a few people have approached me asking for tips on how to do well in the Google Online Marketing Challenge. So, I thought I might as well gather some of my experiences in a blog post, and share them with everybody. A little […]
Category: english
The black sheep problem in machine learning
Just a picture of a black sheep. Introduction. Hal Daumé III wrote an interesting blog post about language bias and the black sheep problem. In the post, he defines the problem as follows: The “black sheep problem” is that if you were to try to guess what color most sheep were by looking and language […]
How to teach machines common sense? Solutions for ambiguity problem in artificial intelligence
Introduction The ambiguity problem illustrated: User: “Siri, call me an ambulance!” Siri: “Okay, I will call you ‘an ambulance’.” You’ll never reach the hospital, and end up bleeding to death. Solutions Two potential solutions: A. machine builds general knowledge (“common sense”) B. machine identifies ambiguity & asks for clarification from humans The whole “common sense” […]
Rule-based AdWords bidding: Hazardous loops
1. Introduction In rule-based bidding, you want to sometimes have step-backs where you first adjust your bid based on a given condition, and then adjust it back after the condition has passed. An example. An use case would be to decrease bids for weekend, and increase back to normal level for weekdays. However, defining the […]
Affinity analysis in political social media marketing – the missing link
Introduction. Hm… I’ve figured out how to execute successful political marketing campaign on social media [1], but one link is missing still. Namely, applying affinity analysis (cf. market basket analysis). Discounting conversions. Now, you are supposed to measure “conversions” by some proxy – e.g., time spent on site, number of pages visited, email subscription. Determining […]
Total remarketing – the concept
Here’s a definition: Total remarketing is remarketing in all possible channels with all possible list combinations. Channels: Programmatic display networks (e.g., Adroll) Google (GDN, RLSA) Facebook (Website Custom Audience) Facebook (Video viewers / Engaged with ads) etc. How to apply: Test 2-3 different value propositions per group Prefer up-selling and cross-selling over discounts (the goal […]
In 2016, Facebook bypassed Google in ads. Here’s why.
Introduction The gone 2016 was the first year I thought Facebook ends up beating Google in the ad race, despite the fact Google still dominates in revenue ($67Bn vs. $17Bn in 2015). I’ll explain why. First, consider that Google’s growth is restricted by three things: natural demand keyword volumes, and approach of perfect market. More […]
Buying and selling complement bundles: When individual selling maximizes profit
Introduction When we were young, me and my brother used to buy and sell game consoles on Huuto.net (local eBay) and on various gamer discussion forums (Konsolifin BBS, for example). We didn’t have much money, so this was a great way to earn some cash — plus it taught us some useful business lessons along […]
Polling social media users to predict election outcomes
The 45th President of the USA Introduction The problem of predicting election outcomes with social media is that the data, such as likes, are aggregate, whereas the election system is not — apart from simple majority voting, in which you only have the classic representativeness problem that Gallup solved in 1936. To solve the aggregation […]
Analyzing sentiment of topical dimensions in social media
Introduction Had an interesting chat with Sami Kuusela from Underhood.co. Based on that, got some inspiration for an analysis framework which I’ll briefly describe here. The model Figure 1 Identifying and analyzing topical text material The description User is interested in a given topic (e.g., Saara Aalto, or #saaraaalto). He enters the relevant keywords. The […]