

Weebly's SnapAds: Survival Of The Fittest Meets Madison Avenue - BvS
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/11/25/snapads-survival-of-the-fittest-meets-madison-avenue/

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alexandros
Amazing idea. I guess user interfaces for websites could follow a similar
route some day. You specify the parameter range for the appearance of a
website and the system finds the appropriate settings for a given
demographic/geographic segment/time of day.

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paraschopra
Actually, I have been thinking a lot on this idea. It is called adaptive web
design. Cluttered web pages can be made a lot less cluttered by adaptively
removing elements which are rarely used. Plus the system can also
automatically test variations in designs, colours, etc depending on the user
profile.

My idea was to make a javascript library which when included would
automatically analyze the page structure and make the pages adaptive without
much of an effort from the developer. The only thing here is that heavy
javascript processing would be required to modify pages on the fly. Or, this
can also be done on the backend but that would require templatizing existing
websites (which could further slow down adoption of this technique).

Any thoughts?

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alexandros
I think the coder of this service replied with a similar example. Apparfently
he started from customizable js websites and did ads later. I hope he moves
the website thing to an open source project.

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brandnewlow
What else could you apply automated A/B testing to?

Headlines? The images that accompany news stories?

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greg
I wrote the software behind SnapAds. Before that I wrote an optimizer service
for web pages that operates on HTML, CSS or Javascript. Check it out at
<http://demo.genetify.com> .

Let me know if there is any interest -- I'd like to open-source the project.

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jbyers
That's awesome. Definitely interested in an open-source version. Let me know
if I can help, contact details in my profile.

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johns
Very cool.

Slightly off-topic...Just over three years ago I came up with names for my
future products that all started with Snap. Only SnapLeague made it anywhere.
But I still have other domains. I wish I hadn't named it like that though
because Snap as a prefix and suffix is getting overdone now. Makes me wonder
if I should rename an upcoming product to something other than what I had
planned.

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rw
Interesting application of evolutionary optimization. The system is probably
easy to reproduce: expect open-source versions soon.

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joshwa
I'm pretty sure the ad agencies have something like this already.

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jamiequint
They don't actually. Ad agencies have people who do this stuff for a living
(generating what they feel will be the optimal ads). Agencies have been held
back by these people in a way, because they are naturally very resistive to
someone telling them that a computer might be able to do their job better than
they can, even if the end result may not be as aesthetically pleasing to them.

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joshwa
In terms of automating the variations, that can be done ahead of time with
photoshop scripting/etc, and then leaving it up to the adserver's optimization
algorithms to serve the best-performing creative.

e.g. <http://www.rightmedia.com/solutions/ad-server/>

Then there are the folks doing personalized dynamic text/etc on ads, e.g:

<http://mediaplex.co.uk/dynamic_messaging.shtml>
<http://advertising.yahoo.com/marketing/smartads/>

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drusenko
you're talking a couple generations behind what we're doing. there is a huge
difference between plugging 10 variations into an ad server and using a
genetic algorithm to quickly and efficiently find a local (or global) maxima
in a search space of over 1 billion possibilities with constantly shifting
preferences.

smartads is also a very different product, very focused on offer optimization,
with a rigid system that doesn't expand well beyond the specific verticals
they've created templates for. most players in this space have fairly limited
optimization abilities, ie a/b testing, which does not scale up.

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joshwa
cool!

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webwright
It says it has founders in common with Weebly... Have some moved on? Or is it
a side project?

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drusenko
We're actually working on both at the moment, and it's certainly not just a
side project. Over time, the two companies will eventually each have an
entirely dedicated staff.

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FiReaNG3L
I wish Google had an API to retrieve Adsense click data for specific ads, you
could easily implement the same 'genetic optimization' process and drive your
revenue to their max.

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tocomment
I thought they did. Are you sure they don't? Otherwise is there an API to
google analytics, maybe you could track it through there?

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dannyv
[http://digg.com/tech_news/SnapAds_Survival_Of_The_Fittest_Me...](http://digg.com/tech_news/SnapAds_Survival_Of_The_Fittest_Meets_Madison_Avenue)

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trapper
What's really needed is an open source version of this so that websites can
integrate custom fitness functions. Obviuously for something as easy as
"clicks" this is trivial, but the real money will be made when you can
integrate it into payment systems. The problem is that it's so easy to write
your own that I doubt an open source one would get much traction.

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tocomment
How did you guys get these large clients on board to try the program? Do you
just have to already have connections with big companies?

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drusenko
lots of work, well over 9 months. our network and existing connections
certainly played a big part.

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axod
Is this any different to adwords auto optimization?

