Expert Systems with Applications 38(2011)1777-1788 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Expert Systems with Applications ELSEVIER journalhomepagewww.elsevier.com/locate/eswa Blogger-Centric Contextual Advertising Teng-Kai Fan, Chia-Hui Chang Department of Computer Science 8 information Engineering, National Central University, No 300, Jung-da Rd, Chung-li, Tao-yuan 320, Taiwan, ROC ARTICLE IN FO A BSTRACT Web advertising(online advertising a form of advertising that uses the world wide web to attract cus- Online advertising tomers, has become one of the most commonly-used marketing channels. This paper addresses the con- ept of Blogger-Centric Contextual Advertising, which refers to the assignment of personal ads to any blog age, chosen in according to bloggers'interests As blogs become a platform for expressing personal opin Information retrieva ons, they naturally contain various kinds of statements, including facts, comments and statements about personal interests, of both a positive and negative nature. To extend the concept behind the Long tail the- ory in contextual advertising, we argue that web bloggers, as the constant visitors of their own blog-sites gS. Hence, in this online contextual advertising. The proposed Blogger-Centric Contextual Advertising(BCCA) framework aims to combine contextual advertising matching with text mining in order to select ads that are to personal interests as revealed in a blog and rank them according to their relevance We valid approach experimentally using a set of data that includes both real ads and actual blog pages. The i indicate that our proposed method could effectively identify those ads that are positively-correlated with a bloggers personal interests. Crown Copyright 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1 Introduction their companies; and corporate bloggers usually blog for their com- nies in an official capacity. Statistics show that four out of five Blogosphere is a collective term comprising all blogs bloggers(about 79%)are personal bloggers. The majority of blog interconnections. A blog, short for weblog, is a type of web gers have advertising or another method of revenue generation is usually maintained by a blogger who will publish seri. on their blogs. Among bloggers who have advertising on their posts containing news, comments, opinions, diaries, and i blogs, two out of three have contextual ads and one-third have ing articles. As of December 2007, the blog search engine Techno- affiliate advertising on their blogs(Technorati, 2008). On average, rati was tracking more than 112 million blogs. Reports also professional and corporate bloggers are more likely to include indicate that about 1. 2 million new blogs are being created world- search ads, display ads and affiliate marketing because they cer wide each day. According to Technorati's reports in April 2007, the tainly understand what kinds of ads are suitable for their blogs. umber of blogs in the top 100 most popular sites has risen substan- However, the majority of personal bloggers who have no specific ce, Dogs dea which ads are proper to their web sites reply on reliable and information outlets matching mechanisms used in contextual advertising. Hence, in Blogs are also an increasingly attractive platform for advertis- this paper we hope to propose a contextual advertising mechanism ers. The majority of bloggers have advertising on their blogs. Mar- that could increase click rates on personal blogs keters realize that bloggers are creating high-quality content and Contextual advertising is based on studies that show that 80% of attracting growing and loyal audiences(Technorati, 2008). Hence, internet users are interested in receiving personalized content on it is common for blogs to feature advertisements that either finan- sites they visit (Choice Stream, 2005 ) Since the topic of a page cially benefit the blogger or promote the blogger's favorite causes. somehow reflects the interest of visitors, ads delivered to visitors loggers can be classified into three types(Technorati, 2008). should depend upon page content rather than upon stereotypes Personal bloggers blog about topics on personal interests not asso- created according to their geographical locations or upon other ciated with their work, professional bloggers mainly blog about mographic features, such as gender or age ( Kazienko Adamski their industries and professions but not in an official capacity for 2007). As shown in previous studies, strong relevance increases the OneUpWeb, 2005; Wang, Zhang, Choi, D'Eredita, 2002). Some E-mail address: chia@csie ncu. edu. tw(C.-H. Chang studies(Fan Chang, 2009: Zhang, Surendran, Platt, Narasim- han, 2008 )have also demonstrated that focusing on relevant topics 0957-4174/s-see front matter Crown ght o 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016|eswa2010.07.10Blogger-Centric Contextual Advertising Teng-Kai Fan, Chia-Hui Chang * Department of Computer Science & Information Engineering, National Central University, No. 300, Jung-da Rd., Chung-li, Tao-yuan 320, Taiwan, ROC article info Keywords: Online advertising Text mining Machine learning Marketing Information retrieval Language model abstract Web advertising (online advertising), a form of advertising that uses the World Wide Web to attract cus￾tomers, has become one of the most commonly-used marketing channels. This paper addresses the con￾cept of Blogger-Centric Contextual Advertising, which refers to the assignment of personal ads to any blog page, chosen in according to bloggers’ interests. As blogs become a platform for expressing personal opin￾ions, they naturally contain various kinds of statements, including facts, comments and statements about personal interests, of both a positive and negative nature. To extend the concept behind the Long Tail the￾ory in contextual advertising, we argue that web bloggers, as the constant visitors of their own blog-sites, could be potential consumers who will respond to ads on their own blogs. Hence, in this paper, we pro￾pose using text mining techniques to discover bloggers’ immediate personal interests in order to improve online contextual advertising. The proposed Blogger-Centric Contextual Advertising (BCCA) framework aims to combine contextual advertising matching with text mining in order to select ads that are related to personal interests as revealed in a blog and rank them according to their relevance. We validate our approach experimentally using a set of data that includes both real ads and actual blog pages. The results indicate that our proposed method could effectively identify those ads that are positively-correlated with a blogger’s personal interests. Crown Copyright 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Blogosphere is a collective term comprising all blogs and their interconnections. A blog, short for weblog, is a type of web site that is usually maintained by a blogger who will publish serial journal posts containing news, comments, opinions, diaries, and interest￾ing articles. As of December 2007, the blog search engine Techno￾rati1 was tracking more than 112 million blogs. Reports also indicate that about 1.2 million new blogs are being created world￾wide each day. According to Technorati’s reports in April 2007, the number of blogs in the top 100 most popular sites has risen substan￾tially. Hence, blogs continue to become more and more viable news and information outlets. Blogs are also an increasingly attractive platform for advertis￾ers. The majority of bloggers have advertising on their blogs. Mar￾keters realize that bloggers are creating high-quality content and attracting growing and loyal audiences (Technorati, 2008). Hence, it is common for blogs to feature advertisements that either finan￾cially benefit the blogger or promote the blogger’s favorite causes. Bloggers can be classified into three types (Technorati, 2008). Personal bloggers blog about topics on personal interests not asso￾ciated with their work, professional bloggers mainly blog about their industries and professions but not in an official capacity for their companies; and corporate bloggers usually blog for their com￾panies in an official capacity. Statistics show that four out of five bloggers (about 79%) are personal bloggers. The majority of blog￾gers have advertising or another method of revenue generation on their blogs. Among bloggers who have advertising on their blogs, two out of three have contextual ads and one-third have affiliate advertising on their blogs (Technorati, 2008). On average, professional and corporate bloggers are more likely to include search ads, display ads and affiliate marketing, because they cer￾tainly understand what kinds of ads are suitable for their blogs. However, the majority of personal bloggers who have no specific idea which ads are proper to their web sites reply on reliable matching mechanisms used in contextual advertising. Hence, in this paper we hope to propose a contextual advertising mechanism that could increase click rates on personal blogs. Contextual advertising is based on studies that show that 80% of internet users are interested in receiving personalized content on sites they visit (ChoiceStream, 2005). Since the topic of a page somehow reflects the interest of visitors, ads delivered to visitors should depend upon page content rather than upon stereotypes created according to their geographical locations or upon other demographic features, such as gender or age (Kazienko & Adamski, 2007). As shown in previous studies, strong relevance increases the number of click-throughs (Chatterjee, Hoffman, & Novak, 2003; OneUpWeb, 2005; Wang, Zhang, Choi, & D’Eredita, 2002). Some studies (Fan & Chang, 2009; Zhang, Surendran, Platt, & Narasim￾han, 2008) have also demonstrated that focusing on relevant topics 0957-4174/$ - see front matter Crown Copyright 2010 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2010.07.105 * Corresponding author. E-mail address: chia@csie.ncu.edu.tw (C.-H. Chang). 1 http://Technorati.com. Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 1777–1788 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Expert Systems with Applications journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa