Title: 

Online Advertisements and Online Algorithms

Abstract:

Capacity or budget planning is an important component of any online ad serving platform. This has given rise to a rich and exciting line of work in online algorithms, and one of the most successful marriages of theory and practice. The practical aspects have directly influenced the theory and the theory has had significant impact on the design of modern advertising systems. The talk will give an overview of this interaction and some recent results on a very general problem called the online convex programming problem.

Bio:

Nikhil R. Devanur is a researcher in the Theory group at Microsoft Research, Redmond. He is interested in designing algorithms that are faster, simpler, work online or in a distributed fashion, for some of the fundamental combinatorial optimization problem and in "Automated Economics",  which studies the question of how technology can be used to improve the efficiency of economic systems. Prior to joining Microsoft Research, Nikhil got his PhD from Georgia Tech and spent a year at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago as a Research Assistant Professor.