Ads System - asp.net

Question

I am creating an Ad system for an ASP.NET website. The website has a section for advertisers. They register their and posts there ads, They will pay the maximum budget for the ad first, There is a daily budget , so the advertiser can control his budget, There will be a lot of ads from different advertisers to show in the website. The ads has two attributes maximum budget and daily budget, How can i select ads , How many times an ad can display, Can anyone give me a method or algorithm for that.

Answer 1

Hey Priyan,
here's how we handle it in AdServerBeans (http://www.adserverbeans.com - it's open source, you can check the source code):
DROP FUNCTION if exists get_speed;
CREATE FUNCTION get_speed(from_date DATETIME, to_date DATETIME, views_limit INT, views_served INT, now_date_time TIMESTAMP)
RETURNS double
DETERMINISTIC
NO SQL
BEGIN
DECLARE banner_total_serving_time INTEGER;
DECLARE banner_served_time INTEGER;
DECLARE percent_time_served DOUBLE;
DECLARE percent_ad_events_served DOUBLE;
IF (views_limit IS NULL OR views_limit=0) THEN RETURN -1;END IF;
IF (views_served IS NULL) THEN SET views_served = 0;END IF;
IF (banner_total_serving_time = 0) THEN SET banner_total_serving_time = 1;END IF;
IF (views_limit = 0) THEN SET views_limit = 1;END IF;
SET banner_total_serving_time = TIMESTAMPDIFF(SECOND, from_date, to_date);
SET banner_served_time = TIMESTAMPDIFF(SECOND, from_date, now_date_time);
SET percent_time_served = (100 * banner_served_time) / banner_total_serving_time;
SET percent_ad_events_served = (100 * views_served) / views_limit;
RETURN percent_ad_events_served - percent_time_served;
END
;;
This MySQL function returns negative or positive number. Negative if we are underperforming, positive if overperforming.
Underperforming - serve, overperforming - skip to the next banner or not serve.
Input parameters are self-explanatory I hope.

Answer 2

I would recommend looking at scheduling algorithms.
For example, you could use the budget to determine a number of times / period (day/week/etc), and use that as a weighting factor in a weighted round robin schedule. This would be a simple way to balance out requests from different advertisers evenly through time. (NOTE: The link above is more geared towards network packet scheduling, but the basic algorithm would work...)

Answer 3

I think you should use different algorithms for your problem. Normally in that kind of systems you have:
ASAP (The campaign will be shown as soon as possible without limitation)
Even distribution/redistribute if overdelivered (The campaign's traffic will be evenly distributed through the indicated period of time. If the campaign is overdelivered due to any modification, a new traffic distribution will be calculated so the remaining traffic amount is evenly distributed in the remaining period of time)
Even distribution in two halves (The even distribution in two halves function is similar to the even distribution/redistribute option. However, it allows the user to assign an amount of traffic to the first half of the campaign and another to the second half. The halves are calculated by taking into account the total duration of the campaign, its weekly timetable and its multiple begin and end dates, if applicable. Then, the system takes the total amount of traffic, multiplies it by the corresponding percentage set for each half, and assigns it uniformly within each half.)
Adaptable even distribution (Traffic will be assigned according to traffic distribution of the sites where the campaign will run. More traffic will be assigned to peak hours and less to off-peak hours. When campaign is near its schedule end date, traffic distribution will be accelerated to ensure that goals are met.)
If too many algorithms is something which you do not want to deal, then implement only ASAP, I mean if that an advertiser can win he will win still his daily budget is over