Introduction to computational advertising

Web advertising is the primary driving force behind many Web activities, including Internet search as well as publishing of online content by third-party providers. Even though the notion of online advertising barely existed a decade ago, the topic is so complex that it attracts attention of a variety of established scientific disciplines, including computational linguistics, computer science, economics, psychology, and sociology, to name but a few. Consequently, a new discipline --- Computational Advertising --- has emerged, which studies the process of advertising on the Internet from a variety of angles. A successful advertising campaign should be relevant to the immediate user's information need as well as more generally to user's background and personalized interest profile, be economically worthwhile to the advertiser and the intermediaries (e.g., the search engine), as well as be aesthetically pleasant and not detrimental to user experience.