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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SYSTEMS
An Adaptive Intelligent Management System
of Advertising for Social Networks:
A Case Study of Facebook
Jose Aguilar
Abstract— At present, social networks are strongly used for
personal or professional purposes. The social networks have
accumulated a large amount of information, which can be used
in different ways. One of such possible purposes is advertising.
In particular, when a company pays for advertising in a social
network, it wants to get an ideal deployment of the ads on the
network. The ideal behavior aims at reducing the high costs to
pay, the number of hours to design advertising, the difficulty in
the creation of ads by lots, among other things. In particular,
the optimization of the production of advertising on social
networks, based on the performance of the ads, is not an easy
task. If we make an incorrect design, this can result in losses for a
company. In this sense, this paper presents an intelligent system of
management of social network advertising, based on data mining
techniques, to automatically produce ads. In addition, we test
our adaptive mechanism of automated production (generation) of
online advertising on Facebook. Our system carries out automatic
modifications and improvements of ads. Facebook is one of the
more popular social networks, being widely used by companies
for advertising, in order to create contents attracting the attention
of users.
Index Terms— Decision support systems, Facebook, intelligent
systems, online advertising, social networks.
I. I NTRODUCTION
T ODAY, the production of online advertising in an efficient
manner is very difficult and complicated. Specifically,
social network advertising tends to be complicated since
the ads have a complex behavior that depends directly on
the acceptance of the public. Getting an ideal behavior of
the ads is understood as achieving high traffic at low cost
per click (CPC). This surely means that the reader is pleased
with the ads, because they contain relevant information and
an appealing image, among other desirable attributes. On the
other hand, making ads manually implies both high costs and
high number of hours of work. In addition, once ads are on
the web, to extract statistical information, to recognize where
Manuscript received October 20, 2015; revised December 27, 2016,
July 6, 2017, and September 11, 2017; accepted September 28, 2017. The
work of J. Aguilar was supported in part by the Universidad Autónoma
de Chile and in part by the Prometeo Project of the Ministry of Higher
Education, Science, Technology and Innovation of the Republic of Ecuador.
(Corresponding author: Jose Aguilar.)
J. Aguilar is with CEMISID, Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida 5101,
Venezuela, and also with the Department of Computer Science and Elec-
tronics, Universidad Técnica Particular de Loja, Loja 1101, Ecuador (e-mail:
aguilar@ula.ve).
G. Garcia is with CEMISID, Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida 5101,
Venezuela.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCSS.2017.2759188
2329-924X © 2017 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
1
and Gerardo Garcia
certain failures occur, and to discover possible improvements
are also cumbersome tasks.
Thus, this problem leads to several questions: How can
we automate the process of production of advertising online?
How to perform a statistical analysis of the performance of the
advertising online? How to exploit this statistical information
to improve the performance of online advertising?
On the other hand, Facebook is an excellent marketing tool,
because it has an advertising system that allows using the
information of each user for a targeted advertising. However,
some studies reveal that users’ purchase decisions are not
influenced only by advertisements, and that users do not
actively use Facebook as an information source [23]. In this
way, although Facebook provides an ideal platform for online
advertising, it still needs some additional systems to exploit
its potentialities.
In general, there is an extensive literature about online
advertising on social networks. For example, the following
kinds of works can be found: the introduction of the main
aspects and trends considered in the online ads [6], [17],
[18], [43], the proposition of advertising methods [6], [13],
[26], [36], the description of the online consumer behavior
[9], [10], [12], [28], [29], and the personalization of
ads [5], [31]. Other works analyze the concept of “social adver-
tising” [2], [38], [39], in order to incorporate the user interac-
tions. Even more, there exist works reviewing the privacy of
the consumers, and its effect on the ad performance [26], [37],
as well as techniques to mine social network data that can be
useful to build ads [14], [15], [22], [30], in order to generate
useful indicators that can be used to create ads [19]. These
investigations will be presented in detail in Section III.
According to the literature and our knowledge, there is
no research about the automatic generation of online ads,
exploiting the different sources of information in the social
networks. This type of system must integrate some results
already achieved in previous works, for example, to mine
social network data to discover information about the con-
sumer or ads behaviors, and to determine the information to
be used to build good ads.
In this paper, we define an adaptive mechanism for the
automatic production of online advertising, which consider
these aspects. Specifically, we propose an intelligent system
that automates the generation of advertising on Facebook. Our
system carries out an automatic modification and improve-
ments of ads manually made by users. The system uses a set
of algorithms of classification and optimization, which have
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2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SYSTEMS
been used in the area of data mining, particularly, genetic
algorithms and support vector machines (SVMs). Our system
generates online ads on Facebook, based on the performance of
the ads and the behavior of target users on this social network.
We consider Facebook as case study, because this social
network provides helpful information for adapting online ads.
II. O NLINE A DVERTISING
Social networks have changed the way to define online
ads, due to how they manage ads. It is crucial to understand
how the social networks manage online advertising and online
shopping. Business people look for solutions about how to
customize their ads, in order to maximize the gains based on
good ads (brand loyalty, etc.) and a good performance on the
social network platforms (a lot of exposition, low cost of the
ads, etc.). There are a lot of papers about online advertising.
However, normally such papers are limited to subjects such as:
understanding online consumer behavior [12], [28], how an
ad impacts consumer attitudes and cognitions [2], [10], [15],
how people use the Internet for shopping [5], [9], how ads
can impact the user perception about a product [13], [37], and
how to personalize online ads [5], [31], [37].
Many Internet applications collect significant volumes of
personal data from their users, allowing their advertisers tar-
geting and personalizing ads [31]. Targeting advertising means
that those ads are shown to only a specific target group, based
on various criteria such as age, purchase history, or income.
Personalized ads partially reduce “waste circulation” [10],
because they determine the audience of an ad (prospective
buyers of the product or service being advertised). To increase
the efficiency of advertisement, targeting normally exploits
the user’s information on the Internet (gender, age, residence,
hobbies, etc.). Nevertheless, it needs to exploit the specific
characteristics of the social networks, in order to get an ideal
behavior of the ads when displayed on the networks. In this
way, these data can create ads that fit the targeted user and
social networks [31].
Targeted advertising is used by different platforms.
It enables companies to reach their target audiences efficiently.
For example, Amazon uses the history of users’ shopping
and searching, in order to propose new products; Facebook
matches ads with the interests of the users; etc. Most com-
panies present in the web are using this type of advertising
in these mediums. For that, the data are processed using data
mining tools. In particular, there are a lot of papers about the
target advertising using information about the user’s prefer-
ences to define target groups with similar purchase behavior,
etc. [5], [31]. However, there are no works that consider
the characteristics of the social networks. That precludes
maximizing the efficiency of an advertising campaign, and the
profitable utilization of the ad budget.
Another very interesting aspect is the influence of the
society, communities, etc., on the individual’s purchasing
behavior. The current personalized or targeted advertising does
not reflect the target consumer social network. Nonetheless,
this is changing with the evolution of social networks, such
as Facebook.com and Linkedin.com. These have introduced a
new form of advertising, called “social advertising,” which
incorporates user interactions [38], [39]. The resulting ad
considers these interactions within ads content. This is a
revolution for advertisers, because it means that they could
exploit the power of an individual’s social network, both to
target advertising and to engage their audience.
We argue that the dynamic combination of these
aspects (personalized ads, individual’s social network, and
specific characteristics of the social networks) can improve
the efficiency of an advertising campaign. The integration of
these aspects in a system, in order to coordinate the adaptation
of the online ads, can improve their performance in the social
networks, reducing the costs and time for their production.
Thus, the main contribution of this research is the definition
of an intelligent system that integrates these aspects to adapt
online ads on the social networks. In this sense, considering
these aspects, we propose an intelligent management system
for social network advertising.
A. Social Network Advertising and Facebook
Social network advertising is a term used to describe a form
of online advertising that focuses on social networking sites.
One of the main advantages of social network advertising
is that advertisers can take advantage of the demographic
information from users, and target their ads appropriately.
From the advertisers’ point of view, it is very important to
discover where their target audiences lie, how much they can
invest, etc. In this way, they can make the most out of their
social network, and obtain the best return on their campaign.
For all this, they need systems that help in the definition of the
content, and in general, in managing ads, in order to increase
visibility, membership, and traffic across their ads [17]. The
advertising performance criteria in social networks are the
following.
1) Clicks: Representing the total number of clicks received
by an ad in a given time.
2) Scope: Indicating the number of unique people who see
a specific announcement in a given time.
3) Click-Through Rate (CTR) of an Ad: Showing the num-
ber of clicks that an ad received divided by the number
of time instants (length of the time period) the ad was
shown.
4) Frequency: Indicating the average number of occasions
that each person sees a particular ad in a given time
period.
5) Interactions: Representing the total number of occasions
that users interact with a page or publication in a given
time period.
6) Price: Indicating the maximum fee that the adver-
tiser is willing to pay for each click (CPC) or per
1000 impressions (cost per thousand).
Facebook is one of the more interesting social networks
for advertisers, due to the availability of information about its
users [36]. Facebook offers advertisers more strategic value
than any other social network. This has been accomplished
with a mix of applications [20]: targeted display ads and
sponsored stories, known as social ads and sponsored stories;
branded profiles, known as Facebook pages; a developer incen-
tive program to encourage the content development, called
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AGUILAR AND GARCIA: ADAPTIVE INTELLIGENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OF ADVERTISING FOR SOCIAL NETWORKS
Fig. 1. Advertising environment of Facebook.
Facebook developers; and the information of the brand-related
user behavior. Facebook social ads are targeted to specific
users based on their profiles and behavior in the network. For
instance, Facebook social ads can be delivered to users whose
friends have recently engaged with the brand’s Facebook
profile, or visited the brand’s website. Even the location of
delivery for social ads can be targeted with ads appearing next
to news feeds of friends (a Facebook feature that allows friends
to update others on their recent activities) who mention the
brand, by delivering ad impressions that are related to news
feeds.
The Facebook advertising mechanism uses these compo-
nents to describe the behavior of the ads. The greater is
the number of clicks received, the larger the traffic on a
page or application. In this way, according to the response of
the users to an announcement, Facebook increases/decreases
the reach of the advertisement. If the answer to the announce-
ment is positive, then the CPC of an ad tends to be lowered,
otherwise the cost tends to rise. The ideal behavior of the ads
consists of getting the most clicks at a lower CPC as possi-
ble. Fig. 1 shows the advertising environment of Facebook,
presenting some statistics for the advertiser. The environment
displays a graphic of the number of clicks and the user’s
subscription, as well as various statistics, which have been
described above (frequency, CTR, etc.). Facebook constantly
offers updated data, such as the number of clicks on a page,
the CTR, among others [17].
III. R ELATED W ORKS
The rapid global growth of social media has increased
the research in this area from the marketing perspective.
Particularly, there are a lot of papers in this domain, which
study different aspects of the subject: users’ behavior, how
to define personalized ads, what “social advertising” means,
etc. [6] establishes why social networks are important to
businesses as an advertising form, and studies the current
advertising methods. Svetlana et al. [36] examines the crite-
ria for a successful social network advertising. Specifically,
the authors consider as cases the Facebook, YouTube, and
MySpace networks. They review some of the existing metrics
that are used by corporations, to measure their effectiveness
in reaching out to consumers.
Today, a variety of terms are used for different kinds
of personalized ads [5], [15], [31]. Personalization means
limiting the number of people seeing an ad. For example,
3
“Predictive Behavioral Targeting” estimates the interest of the
buying users. “Geotargeting” delivers ads based on the location
of the user. “Social Media Targeting” defines different target-
ing options. The question of the effectiveness and benefits of
personalized advertisement are still vague.
In general, online advertisement has some problems. Online
ads do not receive much user attention, especially when they
are placed on the right side of the screen, a phenomenon
known as Banner Blindness. The placing of banners on the
right side is a common practice, also followed by Facebook.
Eroğlu [12] observes that a placement at the edges of a
website leads to less attention from the user. Users neglect
the peripheral areas and see the headlines placed in the middle
and the graphic animations. They actively avoid looking at the
banners.
Several papers study online consumer behavior. For exam-
ple, Saxena and Khanna [31] analyze several models about the
online consumer behavior: the model of Intention, the model
of adoption and continuance, and the Engel-Kollat-Blackwell
model. Some studies examine consumer attitudes on the
marketing on social networks. Specifically, the consumers’
beliefs about advertising have been studied in [6], observing
that the beliefs influence on the consumers’ attitudes, which
in turn affect their purchasing. Eroğlu [12] presents a the-
oretical explanation about the online consumer behavior.
Puerto and Aguilar [28] present a literature review about
the online consumer behavior, focusing on online consumer
purchase intention and online consumer loyalty, in the context
of Norwegian business students. This paper identifies three
important variables about the consumer purchase intention: the
online trust, the previous online purchase experience, and the
interaction on social networks. In addition, the paper finds two
variables impacting online consumer loyalty: online shopping
enjoyment and online satisfaction.
Bozkır et al. [9] examines the Internet usage to shop,
highlighting the consumers’ motivations and behaviors. The
authors define several questions: Why do consumers prefer
online shopping to traditional shopping? Why do some individ-
uals utilize online shopping more than others? Is there a differ-
ence between online shoppers and traditional shoppers? Which
factors are important in consumers’ decisions to shop online?
The authors analyze various approaches to answer these
questions. These approaches are based on socio-psychological
theories. An important assumption of these theories is that
the individuals are rational. When other factors are constant,
the rational individual focuses on the benefits and the costs
of each factor. The benefits and the costs specified in these
approaches are not limited to the monetary dimensions. For
example, the human sentiments as feeling good about oneself,
the ego, the entertainment, the social acceptance, and the frus-
tration, are the components of the cost function. The authors of
this paper propose the extended technology acceptance model,
and an improved version of the technology acceptance model,
based on socio-psychological theories, to explain the behavior
of the online consumer.
Chu et al. [10] examine the beliefs, the attitudes, and
the behavioral responses toward social network advertising
of the young users’. The authors found that social network
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4 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SYSTEMS
usage is positively linked to users’ responses, such as the
attitudes and the behaviors. Their results demonstrate that
the users with higher levels of consciousness are more likely
to have favorable beliefs and attitudes toward social network
advertising. Ragnar [29] identifies the belief dimensions that
influence the consumer attitudes toward the social network
advertising in the context of South Asia. The authors also
examine the influence of the consumers’ attitudes toward
social network advertising, on their ad clicking and online
buying behaviors. The results reveal a favorable attitude toward
the social network advertising, which influence the consumers’
ad clicking behavior.
In [38] is analyzed the concept of “social advertising”
that incorporates user interactions. The authors explore the
effectiveness of social ads using data from Facebook. They
compare the performance of social ads with conventional
targeted and untargeted ads. These ads contain the name
of the fan, and are targeted to that fan’s social network
using its social relationships. Social ads are targeted to the
friends of “fans” of a site on Facebook. They found that,
on average, these social ads were more effective than con-
ventional targeted or untargeted ads. Their results demonstrate
something new: social advertising may be more effective when
targeted toward groups of consumers who are not obvious
customers of the product. However, when advertisers attempt
to reinforce the social influence, consumers appear less likely
to respond positively to the ad. This is important because the
majority of advertising technologies on the web are based on
whether a consumer takes a certain action, like searching a
product [37], [38].
Other studies analyze how the privacy controls affect
advertising performance, particularly, if online ads violate
the privacy of consumers, what can generate resistance from
the consumers to the ad. This is a motivational state, called
“reactance,” where the consumers resist something that they
find coercive. Theoretically, if the privacy can be controlled,
then the potential for customer reactance can be minimized
and the performance of the online advertising can be improved.
Todi [37] investigates how the internet users’ perception about
the control of their personal information affects their probabili-
ties to click on online advertising. The increase in effectiveness
is greater to ads that do not use private information to
personalize their messages, and to target groups who are more
likely to use the privacy settings [37].
Online awareness and social network tactics have been used
to enhance the online advertising effectiveness. Angeline [5]
analyzes the online political advertising and how people
use the Internet to shop. With respect to political advertis-
ing, the authors analyze how the online videos and ads can
impact the user assessment. Also, they examine the influence
of the communication on social networks, on the consumers’
relationships with the brands. Finally, the authors study the
male consumers’ motivations to use the Internet to shop
their preferred brands, and how online consumer behavior is
different in each gender.
Bozkır et al. [9] investigate how the size of the target market
influences on the CTRs of the personalized online advertising.
The authors examine the effectiveness of personalized banners
on Facebook. The banners are targeted using different key-
words matching the users’ profile. The results reveal not only
a higher CTR for personalized ads than for nonpersonalized,
but also an increasing of the CTR for banners of minor target
markets. Google, Inc. [17] reports the latest trends in social
network advertising. Today, when a user thinks about buying
something, the user first goes to the Internet, searches for the
product, compares its price with other competing brands, and
decides which one to buy. In [18], several aspects about the
advertising through social networks are discussed, including:
What is the impact of social networks on the mainstream
media? Why to advertise on social networks? What should
be the strategy for social network advertising?
The social networks contain millions of unprocessed data.
By analyzing these data, new knowledge can be obtained.
These data are dynamics, unstructured. To manipulate it,
the traditional data mining techniques are not appropriate,
while the web data mining is an interesting field and a
new trend in this domain of research. [15] introduces a
framework that can be used to mine social network data. The
proposed framework handles the unstructured and dynamic
behavior of the web data. The framework adopts the Hidden
Markov Model to predict the next status of the web data.
Gayana et al. [14] identifie and analyze the existing web
mining techniques used to mine social network data.
Rongjing et al. [30] presents a study to understand the
different variables on online advertising. The authors propose a
model for measuring the advertising value through a structural
equation based on the confirmatory factor analysis. Goyal [18]
studies how the college students perceive the advertisements
on online social networks. For that, they utilize the Zaltman
metaphor elicitation technique, arriving to the next conclu-
sions: the users of online social networks do not dislike the
advertisements, but they simply do not notice them. Some
contents of online social networks mitigate the attractiveness
of the advertisements. In [13] is explored the viability of using
social networks as a recruitment tool in a clinical research trial.
The authors develop, as an example, an ad to recruit partici-
pants to investigate the effectiveness of a behavioral support
program for smoking cessation. The participants recruited via
social media were younger, but there were not differences
with respect to socioeconomic variables or smoking charac-
teristics, compared with the participants recruited via other
traditional means. This paper suggests that using online social
networks is a viable recruitment method for smoking studies,
and compliments other more traditional recruitment methods.
In [44] are explored the social network trends, including their
opportunities, and the potential effects that these trends have
on advertising. In [26], theoretical foundations that can be used
in the research on social networks are identified. This paper
identifies three key theoretical foundations that can be used
in the research on advertising: the networking capability; the
image transferability; and the personal extensibility.
Kaplan [22] explores the trends of the research on social
networks over the past fourteen years. The authors indicate
that social media have gained an incremental attention among
the researchers, who are following the increased usage and
impact of this medium. The authors suggest that, in the
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AGUILAR AND GARCIA: ADAPTIVE INTELLIGENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OF ADVERTISING FOR SOCIAL NETWORKS 5

future, it is necessary a prospective utilization of the social

networks. Consumers are increasingly adopting active roles
in co-creating marketing content [19]. In turn, companies and
organizations are looking for online social marketing programs
and campaigns, in an effort to reach consumers that “live”
online. However, the challenge facing many companies is that,
although they recognize the need to be active on the social
networks, they do not understand how to do it effectively,
what performance indicators they should measure, and how
they should measure them. Also, as companies develop social
network strategies, platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, and
Twitter are often treated as stand-alone elements, rather than
part of an integrated system. Tucker [39] offers a systematic
way of understanding and conceptualizing online social net-
works, as an ecosystem of related elements involving both
digital and traditional media. They carry out a best practice
case study of an organization, to leverage social media in
reaching an important audience of young consumers. Then,
they conclude with several lessons learned related to the
Fig. 2. General model of the intelligent management system for social
strategic integration of social networks into the organization’s network advertising.
marketing communication strategy.
The previous works analyze specific aspects that should be
considered, in order to make automatic online advertising; the ads. Fig. 2 shows the general model of our system. The
for example, to understand online consumer behavior, and main functionalities are as follows.
how to define personalized ads, or identify variables to be 1) Definition of the Characteristics of the Social Network
considered in online advertising. Nevertheless, there are not That Will Use Our System: The properties, tools, and
works that integrate these aspects, in order to adapt them measures available on the social network, useful to build
to specific requirements or characteristics of social networks, ads, are defined.
clients, consumers, or products. In this paper, we propose an 2) Definition of the Requirements of the Clients and the
intelligent system that integrates these aspects, in order to build Product: The product, and the interest of the client of
efficient ads. the social network (e.g., minimize cost, increase the
exposition of the ads, etc.) are characterized.
IV. O UR A DAPTIVE I NTELLIGENT S YSTEM
3) Definition of the Information About the Online Con-
A RCHITECTURE FOR S OCIAL
sumer Behavior Around the Ads: Aspects about the
N ETWORK A DVERTISING
consumer, which we are going to use to characterize
This section describes an intelligent management system his/her behavior around the ads (if he/she makes a click,
for social network advertising. The main aspects taken into if he/she refers the ads to his/her friends, etc.), are
account by our architecture are the characteristics of the social defined.
networks; the requirements of the clients and the product; and
the online consumer behavior in relation to the ads.
Our intelligent system, for the advertising management V. O UR A DAPTIVE I NTELLIGENT S YSTEM IN FACEBOOK
in social networks can be used to promote a brand by an The characterization of our adaptive intelligent system in
advertiser. To do this, he/she must define the target audience Facebook is as follows.
and the subject to promote (product or service). The advertiser 1) Definition of the Characteristics of the Social Network
initially creates some ads, and then the system optimizes these That Will Use Our System: Facebook uses an unknown
ads. These ads are placed on the social networks during the mechanism to show ads to end users, which determines
optimization process to determine their behavior. The social the rate of display (frequency) of each ad according to its
platform displays the ads, determines the frequency at which quality. This quality is defined by Facebook in relation
these ads are shown to the users, and keeps statistics on the to the acceptance of ad by end users, controlling, in this
ads. With that information, our system proposes new best ads. way, the advertising performance.
In particular, our system takes the statistical data to learn 2) Definition of the Requirements of the Clients and the
and to optimize the ads. The statistical data represent user Product: In this specific case, the advertiser can add
reactions in face of advertisements, generic interests in an ad, filters by subject or product to promote. The advertiser
among other things. Thus, if a set of users reacts negatively also will set up the data from his Facebook account,
to an announcement, the system will decide what to do in this so that the program can access it, and export or import
case to improve the advertising. An announcement is important information about the ads. When everything is set up
on a social network if users click on the ad, they refer it correctly, the advertiser can run occasionally the system,
to their friends within the same social network, and follow to optimize his advertising campaign.
 This article has been accepted for inclusion in a future issue of this journal. Content is final as presented, with the exception of pagination.
6 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SYSTEMS
Fig. 3. System architecture.
3) Definition of the Information About the Online Con-
sumer Behavior Around the Ads: Part of the information
retrieved from Facebook is about ads, sorted by number
of clicks, products followed by the clients, etc.
A. Implementation of the Adaptive Intelligent
System in Facebook
The specific configuration of our model is shown in Fig. 3.
The main elements are a genetic algorithm, an SVM, and
a natural language tool. The genetic algorithm is used to
generate ads, because it allows reproducing existing ads. The
SVM classifies the images extracted from the Internet, for their
utilization in the advertisements. The natural language tool
is used to modify the text in the ads. The natural language
tool recognizes each word of the original text, identifying its
meaning. In this way, our system is able to carry out a correct
change of the text using synonyms. Additionally, the system
has a bridge with Facebook, to export new ads to Facebook,
and import statistics from Facebook.
Among the information retrieved from Facebook are the ads
sorted by the number of clicks. The number of clicks repre-
sents the fitness function of each ad, in the initial population.
In subsequent generations, the fitness function is calculated
differently (explained later). Then, the genetic algorithm repro-
duces the population through generations, using two genetic
operators, crossover and mutation of ads. The crossover
exchanges the ad features between pairs of ads (which could
be either text, image, and/or size of the ads). The mechanism
of mutation can be: random image resizing, incorporating new
images, or generation of new text.
Fig. 4. Representation of the individual.
The SVM is specifically used to identify new images. It con-
sists of three submodules: a submodule to find new images
on the Internet; another submodule takes images imported
from the Internet and determines theirs visual characteristics;
and the last one performs a classification of the images
retrieved from the Internet, to determine which ones are best to
be included in the new ads. To use SVM, we must previously
train it with images related to the desired ad.
The genetic algorithm performs the generation of announce-
ments until it converges. The first generation is made of
ads done by the advertiser. In this way, our system carries
out an automated modification, in order to improve the ads
manually made by the users. Upon completion of this phase,
the new ads are exported to Facebook. Then, Facebook
publishes the new ads, until it is again called our system.
Thus, there is a feedback process between Facebook and our
system.
B. Genetic Algorithm
The genetic algorithm is the best known evolutionary
algorithm [4]. There is a lot of research about it. It is based
on a population of solutions, where each individual describes
a solution to the problem to be solved. This population is
submitted to a set of genetic operators over a number of
generations, in order to improve its individuals according to a
fitness function.
In order to begin the automatic execution of our system,
we need to create some ads, which will be the initial popula-
tion of the program. This population will be optimized by our
system. In addition, the genetic algorithm needs to define the
following elements:
1) The Structure of the Individuals: In our case, the chro-
mosome (individual) is a possible announcement (ad),
and is divided into three genes (see Fig. 4), which
are: the ad image, the image dimension (maximum
100 × 72 px), and the ad text (90 characters maximum).
2) Fitness Function: It evaluates each possible solution to
the problem, and returns a value that indicates the solu-
tion quality. Basically, in our particular case, the fitness
function evaluates whether the selected image is the
most acceptable, in terms of its similarity with respect
to the images with better performances in the ad, i.e., it
evaluates if the ad text is similar to the ad texts that
have obtained the best values, and similarly, if the image
dimension is within the range of ads that have obtained
the best values. Specifically, the following holds.
a) In the case of the image, the fitness function checks
whether the image score is positive, and if it has
the highest score among the set of images
F(x) = max{Score(x)}. (1)
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AGUILAR AND GARCIA: ADAPTIVE INTELLIGENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OF ADVERTISING FOR SOCIAL NETWORKS
Fig. 5. Crossover between two images of ads.
where Score(x) will be described in the next
section.
b) In the case of the ad text, the fitness func-
tion checks, using a lexical-morphological mech-
anism, if words can be replaced by synonyms.
If words can be replaced, then the announcement is
rewarded with a positive constant, otherwise the ad
is penalized with a negative constant. Additionally,
if the new ad text is similar to ad texts that have
obtained the best values, then it is rewarded, else
it is penalized.
c) Finally, the image size is checked. If the obtained
value of the dimension is in the range of the
accepted dimensions, then the ad is rewarded with
a positive constant, otherwise the ad is penalized
with a negative constant. Additionally, if the size is
similar to the images of the ads that have obtained
the best values, then the ad is rewarded, else it
is penalized. The above three values are added to
determine the fitness of each individual (online ad).
3) Genetic Operators: In our case, the evolution process
uses two operators, one for crossing genes from two
chromosomes/individuals, and another for the mutation
of a chromosome. The crossover operator chooses a pair
of chromosomes, and then takes a random point as the
crossing point of the genes. The gene may be the ad text,
the image size, the image, or a combination of them.
Fig. 5 shows an example.
For each mutation, a chromosome is randomly selected, and
also, one of its genes is randomly chosen. With this, several
types of mutation can be applied as follows.
1) If the text must be mutated, then the system calls a
text generation system that recognizes the words on
the current text, identifies their meanings, and chooses
synonyms from a database.
2) In the case of the image dimension, the system chooses
randomly a value for the dimension.
3) Finally, if the system decides to mutate the image,
then it invokes SVM. SVM classifies a set of sample
images obtained from the Internet, in accordance to
their similarity to the images of the best advertisements.
Once the new images are obtained with SVM, then
they replace the originals in the respective chromo-
somes. The following section details the use of this
technique.
7
Fig. 6. Diagram of the mechanism of the image classification.
C. Support Vector Machine
In our system, SVM will be used for image classification.
The images will be characterized depending on the visual
content (for example, if the image contains a car, or does not
contain it). The resulting characterization of images is used
to search for images on an image database, with the aim of
acquiring images with a specific theme or visual content.
SVM is a supervised learning model with learning algo-
rithms that analyze data and recognize patterns. Usually,
it is used for classification and regression analysis prob-
lems [27], [33]. In our system, the first step consists in prepar-
ing the image to be analyzed using SVM. The mechanism
consists in the following.
1) Recognizing key points in an image, i.e., determining
visual features in small sections of the image; these
features are given by the form of the figure and its
orientation.
2) Determining a vocabulary of visual words. A visual
word is a type of visual feature, or pattern, describing
shapes contained in an image. For example, the corner
of the roof of a house, the edge of a window, etc. Using
this vocabulary, it is possible to classify an image.
3) To do this, we must execute the following steps
(see Fig. 6):
4) Dividing the image into grids. This segmentation can be
based on the key points on the image.
5) Characterizing each grid, based on the visual words that
contain. In this way, a vector of visual words is obtained.
6) Establishing the frequency of each word by a visual
image grid. Each grid is represented in a histogram. The
final vector is a concatenation of these histograms.
7) Determining if the image belongs to a given cate-
gory or not, using the kernel function obtained in the
training phase and the image histograms.
For the mutation process, the database of images must
have an appreciable amount of images without specific topic
(visual content). Also, this idea is used during the training
phase of SVM, but now with a large number of images having
the desired visual contents, because their visual descriptions
should be used to learn classes. Some concepts used here are
as follows.
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8 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SYSTEMS
TABLE I
P ROBLEMS IN THE I DENTIFICATION OF K EY P OINTS IN AN
I MAGE , AND THE T ECHNIQUE U SED IN E ACH C ASE
1) Key sections consist of a section of an image that
may be useful to define an object contained therein.
The key points of objects are extracted from a set of
images, and stored in a knowledge base. An object is
recognized in a new image by comparing each feature
of the new image with the knowledge base. The key
points are characterized by an object and its location,
scale and orientation, in the image. As we see, for the
identification of key points in an image, the system must
solve various problems, for which there are different
solution techniques. Table I presents the technique that
we use to solve them.
2) Location of an object consists in recognizing where it
is located in the image.
3) Object scale is the size recognition of the object.
It recognizes whether an object exists in the image, and
if in a larger or smaller size.
4) Object orientation is the rotation recognition of an
object, in order to know whether an object causes
another pattern.
5) Visual features in an image represent the patterns defined
in the key points (they identify objects or classes present
on each key point). The visual features consist of prop-
erties that describe an object or image, such as color,
shape, texture, orientation, or size of the object. Some
of these features are invariant to the scale or rotation of
the image.
6) Visual Words and Vocabulary: Visual words are repre-
sented by small parts of an image, with some type of
information related to visual features. For example, a car
can be identified by its shape and texture.
7) Histograms of Visual Words: First, a set of histograms
is calculated for each frame (grid) 4 × 4 (8 cells each).
Basically, the number of visual words present in them is
counted, and finally, the sum of all fields is calculated.
This class determines the cumulative histogram of the
image. Thus, the histograms characterize the descriptors
of each 4 × 4 box, which then determine the over-
all image descriptor. Thus, the final image descriptor
becomes a vector of all the values of these histograms.
With the descriptors based on the histograms, the images
can be used both, in the training phase of SVM, and after,
in the classification of new images.
1) Training Mechanism: It is based on the “Pegasos” algo-
rithm (primal estimated subgradient solver for SVM) [33].
The goal of this stage is to determine the support vectors
(kernel function). In our case, we need to find them from the
descriptors generated for the images using visual words. In this
phase, a database with the desired images is used. The aim is
to determine an appropriate kernel function, which separates
the two classes, desired and undesirable images. This kernel
function can be [33]

n
K (x, y) = x i .yi . (2)
i=1
There are other nonlinear kernel functions with best per-
formance [33]. We will not give a detailed description of the
training algorithm, for this go to [33].
In general, the training algorithm using the chosen kernel
function (linear, etc.) performs a minimization of the error
for each training example, from the class where it falls with
respect to the target class where it must be. This minimization
is achieved as a consequence that the kernel function is
characterized by parameters (weights called by some authors),
which are updated at each iteration as a function of the error,
according to a learning rate.
D. Natural Language Processing
In our work, for the text mutation, it is necessary to obtain
from an initial sentence a second one completely different.
In this sense, it is necessary to recognize each word of the
original text, identifying its meaning, and changing it by
using synonyms. In order to recognize a sentence in natural
language, we must understand the sentence grammatically
[its components (noun, verb, object, etc.)].
To do this, we use a natural language processing pack-
age [8]. With it, we can study the position of each word
in the text, and classify it with a label. This label indicates
the component type (noun, verb, etc.), and if it is a verb,
then it indicates its conjugation. Thus, the natural language
processing recognizes the type of word in a sentence using
a morpho-syntactic tagger. Once implemented the labeling
process, a dictionary of synonyms is used, and by a request
to the dictionary, synonym words are determined. The process
is performed to find synonymous words in the text from left
to right, repeating the procedure per each word, until the end
of the sentence. Once we obtain the synonyms for each word,
the system applies the replacement of each one.
The rule for finding synonyms consists of identifying what
type of label belongs to a given word, and looking for synonym
words according to this specific label. In the case of verbs,
the verbs that can be replaced should be conjugated in the
same way.
E. Implementation
The system is implemented using mainly Java (employed
to implement the bridge to export and import data from
Facebook, the genetic algorithm, the mechanism for resizing
images, the text generation, the image search on the Inter-
net, and the communication between the system and SVM),
in combination with MATLAB (employed to develop our SVM
for image classification). Fig. 7 shows an UML component
diagram specifying the used libraries.
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AGUILAR AND GARCIA: ADAPTIVE INTELLIGENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OF ADVERTISING FOR SOCIAL NETWORKS
Fig. 7. UML diagram of system components.
We have used different libraries, the main ones are:
“Jgap” [24] in the case of genetic algorithms; “matlabcon-
trol” [21] to implement the communication between Java and
MATLAB; “OpenNLP” [8] to develop the text recognition;
and “selenium” for Java [7], [25] to develop the bridge.
In addition, there were also used: the API of Google for
Java [16], to implement the module to download images
from Internet; “awt” [17], to resize images; and SVM
“vlfeat” [11], [41] through the MATLAB API, to implement
the image classification.
VI. E XPERIMENTS
This section starts with the definition of the performance
measures used during our experiments; next two types of
experiments are presented: experiments over our classification
system based on SVM to test its capability to recognize good
images, and experiments over our intelligent system to deter-
mine its capability to build optimal ads for Facebook; finally,
we carry out a comparison of our system with previous works.
A. Performance Measures
The performance measures to evaluate our system are as
follows:
scores = W ∗ H + B. (3)
1) To recognize the quality of the chosen image; this
process consists in assigning a score to each image. The
way to assign the score to an image is.
where W is the weight vector obtained in the training phase
of SVM for the kernel function used, H is the vector of
histograms of the visual features of the image to rank,
B represents the value of bias. If this value is zero, then the
score assignment is called impartial or unbiased. Suppose four
images with the following scores 6.49, 0.40, −2.91, −1.51.
There are two distant values (6.49 and −2.91) and two close
values (0.40 and −1.51). The image with value 6.49 assures
us that it is the best image of the desired class, while values
close to 0 indicate that the images are close to the border of
the class.
9
Fig. 8. Score of the best recognized images.
1) Evaluate the generated text; this is implicitly evaluated
by the fitness function.
2) Analyze the quality of an image resizing. Also, it is
implicitly considered in the fitness function.
3) Determine the number of clicks generated by each ad in
a day. Facebook keeps the clicks on an ad, so, in this
way, we can analyze the performance of the ads.
4) Calculate the average position of an advertisement in a
period, with respect to the best previous ads. The time
period is determined by the advertiser.
B. Case Study
We are going to evaluate the system performance con-
sidering various case studies on Facebook. The following
six subjects were studied.
1) Stem cells and cell therapy, abbreviated as CMTC. They
are ads related to skin rejuvenation.
2) Diabetes, abbreviated as DIAB, which are ads related to
diabetes, where the ads should contain images of people
in a medical consultation.
3) Alzheimer, abbreviated as ALZH. These are ads related
to Alzheimer’s, where the ads should contain images of
older people in consultation.
4) Parkinson, abbreviated as PARK. Alike that in the case
of Alzheimer, the advertising tries to assign the contents
of the images in consultation with older people.
5) Arthritis, abbreviated as ARTR. The images should
contain people in consultation.
6) Prostate, abbreviated as PROS. These are ads related
to inflammation of the prostate, prostatic hyperplasia,
in which the content should be adult men in medical
consultation.
The first step is to assess the quality of SVM to classify
images. The data composition of the experiments used by
SVM for its training, and testing, is composed of images
with these subjects or other subjects. In each experiment,
the number of images for the training phase and the number
of test images were defined. The images for the training
phase are divided into positive images and negative images;
positive images are those that the system must recognize, while
negative images are those that the system must not take into
account. We carry out several experiments, where we choose
manually the positive images. We have used one classical
criterion for evaluating our classification algorithm [1], [3],
[27], [42]: the precision. Next, we show one of the experiments
with 400 positive images and 1000 negative for the train-
ing (mix of both), and 200 test images (mix of both). Fig. 8
shows the best images recognized by SVM (classification of
the images retrieved from the Internet) in this test.
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10
TABLE II
E VOLUTION OF THE N EW A DS IN E ACH C ASE S TUDY
In this case, the precision average result is almost per-
fect (99.17%), and the average scores of positive images
is 0.82, while that of negative images is −1.89. According to
our experiments, to avoid unnecessary computation operations,
and over-fitting, the ideal number of positive images during
the training phase is about 400, and of negative images
about 1000. With these values, we can obtain acceptable
results and avoid over-fitting during training.
The next step is to test our intelligent system as a whole.
As a first result, we identify which of the ads given by
our system reached the first 20 positions, among the best
ads of Facebook advertising, after 7 days. This is the most
important indicator of performance, because if the ads reach
the desired ranking, then it indicates that our system based on
the characteristics of the previous ads (text, content and size
of the image) optimizes the ads in real time. This process
was implemented during two months, seven iterations by
subject (six subjects). The iterations indicate when our system
is invoked to optimize the ads. Between the iterations, the
ads compete with other ads. The same test was performed
for each ad, invoking our system between each 4 or 7 days,
which is the estimated time to be able to acquire considerable
data in real time (this is so because, after a few days,
every ad tends to degrade its performance, according to the
Facebook mechanisms). Normally, an ad tends to have a good
reception from users (tends to generate more clicks) during
the first (4–7) days, but after this period the ad reduces the
amount of clicks obtained by day [17], [23].
Table II shows the value of the average position of the best
new ad proposed by our system, in the first 20 positions,
among the best ads of Facebook advertising. As can be
seen from Table II, in each iteration, the average position
is improved. The ideal position is 1, indicating that our ads
are the best of all. In some cases, our ad reaches the best
position, but in the next iteration the performance declines
(as in the ALZH’s case, from iteration 3 to iteration 4). This
might be due to the fact that our system follows a stochastic
process that eventually makes certain good characteristics
of some good ads disappear. For PROS, the ads remained
without improvements (iterations 2 and 3) for several days,
possibly because during that time the system did not obtain
relevant features to achieve a better position, but then a good
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON COMPUTATIONAL SOCIAL SYSTEMS
Fig. 9. Evolution of the case study “CMTC” (percentage of new ads in the
top 20 listing).
position (2) was obtained. In general, in the first iterations, our
system does not propose the best ads (the best position was 6,
for the CMTC subject), but at the end (six and seven iterations)
our system proposes very good ads for Facebook (they are
generally among the two best).
Fig. 9 shows another performance test. It illustrates the per-
centage of new ads proposed by our system to reach the
first 20 positions, among the best ads on Facebook, for the
CMTC subject. The blue line is the percentage per day, while
the red line represents the average percentage of new ads
proposed by our system per iteration. Fig. 9 shows us that,
over time, new ads created by the system override the old,
i.e., our ads automatically renew the advertising campaign.
Both experiments show that over time the system optimizes
the ads (it learns). Another considered statistic was the amount
of sample in the test images (images retrieved from the
Internet). In general, with eight test images for all subjects we
have obtained good results. If we increase the amount of test
images (to 16 or 24), then the difference in the optimization is
not palpable regarding the position reached by our ads. We see
that with a good quality of the classification phase, and then
the ads have in excellent positions on Facebook.
For the real-time performance measurement of our adap-
tive intelligence system, remember that our system must run
each 7 days, because this is the time period required to obtain
the information about the behavior of the ads, which is the
needed input for the genetic algorithm (normally, an ad has
a good reception by the users of Facebook during this time
period). The classifier system is an off-line process, which
can be executed during these days to learn new positive
images. The genetic algorithm has been parameterized to be
executed in a short time period (it is fast). We have got the
previous results in a population of ten individuals, a mutation
probability of 0.1, and a crossover probability of 0.8. Table II
and Fig. 9 show excellent results for seven generations. The
execution time is in milliseconds.
C. Comparison With Other Works
Shalev-Shwartz et al. [34] focus on an intelligent automated
mechanism that optimizes the text of ads. The authors imple-
mented different methods, in order to automatically generate
text related to certain content, allowing them to reduce adver-
tising costs, and increasing the amount of clicks. Their meth-
ods are very similar to ours, with the same goal, but without
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AGUILAR AND GARCIA: ADAPTIVE INTELLIGENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OF ADVERTISING FOR SOCIAL NETWORKS
TABLE III
C OMPARISON OF O UR W ORK W ITH O THER A PPROACHES
TABLE IV
C OMPARISON OF O UR W ORK W ITH [32]
ads with images. Ragnar [29] performs the optimization of
images for banner ads, and analyzes how users accept these.
They show that a banner with a high rate of similarity to the
content of the product generates 9 times more acceptation than
banners with images chosen randomly. They implement an
automatic generation mechanism, resulting in images that are
directly related to the content of the product. Seckelmann [32]
focuses on the control of the user responses, measured as the
rate of clicks they do. Specifically, they present an objective
function in order to maximize the feedback from users, to eval-
uate the acceptance of the advertising. Our work represents a
hybrid in relation to previous research, especially for social
networks. We work with different types of components of
the ads (text, images), and incorporate the user’s information
through the Facebook evaluation of ads (CTR, etc.). Table III
shows a comparison of our approach with respect to other
works, using several criteria.
Our approach, compared to other works, shows a good level
of performance, trying to focus on both, the image and the text
of an ad. That is, our system optimizes each part individually,
and as a whole. Additionally, its objective function considers
different aspects, such as the behavior of the ads, and the
quality of the images (not only the number of clicks). Our
system can be used in different social networks to optimize
ads. Table IV compares the quality of our best ads with
respect to the best ads proposed in [32], for the same set of
experiments during a week, using the next Facebook criteria:
clicks, scope, CTR, frequency, and interactions. These values
represent the average of the best ads proposed for each method.
The experiment was repeated three times during two months.
In general, our ads have the best performances for all Face-
book criteria. The difference between our approach and [32]
is very important. In particular, our system optimizes the CTR
and the price, two very important criteria they define the
11
number of clicks that an ad receives, the number of times that
the ad is shown, and the maximum price to pay for each click.
An obvious question is: What is the reason for the success
of our system? One of the possible reasons is because we start
with a target audience, and try improving the quality of the
three criteria used, learning from the information generated
during the process. We do not know exactly the criteria used
by Facebook to determine the frequency of display of an
ad, but our system learns about the good characteristics of
the ads, and exploits them during its evolution. Our system
takes advantage of the genes (descriptors) that define the ads,
in order to optimize the performance of these.
VII. C ONCLUSION
We have developed an intelligent management system of
social network advertising, and considered Facebook as a case
study. To do this, the problem of data mining in social net-
works was analyzed, and important aspects were characterized
to achieve an automatic management of advertising. Among
these aspects, we took into account the ability of an ad to reach
the top positions, which depend on certain variables that define
the final quality of an ad (for example, if the content of the
image is relevant to the topic of the ad).
Our system represents an answer to the question about how
to automatically design advertisings for Facebook. This paper
answers this question by using data about different ads, and
exploiting the information from Facebook. We consider three
aspects to be optimized: the image, the text and the size of
the ad. Our system learns the best value on Facebook for
these parameters in a given moment, and proposes ads to
consumers that are very well evaluated by Facebook (with a
high frequency of display). Additionally, by the evolutionary
approach followed, our system can adapt to new conditions on
Facebook (new users, other criteria to define the frequency of
display of an ad, etc.).
It is very important, because this way the advertisers do
not worry about how to redefine a new advertising campaign.
Of course, there are limitations to our study. First, we depend
on only these three criteria. However, we can extend them
to exploit social networks of consumers, with the informa-
tion brought from Facebook. Second, there is more available
information on Facebook that could be used, which we have
not yet used. In further research, we will analyze additional
information to be included in our model [37]. In this sense,
the different research analyzed during the development of this
paper give us diverse ideas about how to extend our work.
The techniques used were quite efficient. For instance,
SVM can recognize generic images. However, it still requires
improvements to recognize specific details on the ads
(for example, the mechanism failed in distinguishing old
people from young people). Our system has been tested for
Facebook, and case studies related to the medical industry.
Nevertheless, it can be implemented generically for any theme.
In addition, the system itself is generic to any social network
where ads can be characterized by 3 parameters (images, text,
and dimensions). The only new aspect to be implemented
would be the bridge between the social network and our
system.
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12
Our intelligent system is the first model that considers the
following characteristics of social networks: the requirements
of the clients and the product, and the online consumer
behavior with the ads. An additional improvement has been the
addition of the understanding of the general online consumer
behavior, in order to personalize ads. In addition, a future
work must improve the learning time of the system. Recall that
for the case of images, the system must learn both, positive
images and negative images. Another important task is to
improve the mechanism for generating text, in order to do
this, such a mechanism must recognize complete sentences
and change them correctly, verifying the organization of both,
the words, as well as the correct grammar and spelling.
Finally, another improvement consists in developing a user
friendly environment that allows the user to easily change
input parameters, and quickly configure the system.
Possible applications of our system are: 1) to analyze the
statistics of users with respect to advertising, in order to detail
behaviors such as when a user follows an ad, buys a product,
sends an email, etc. and 2) to optimize the advertising in
similar social networks.
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AGUILAR AND GARCIA: ADAPTIVE INTELLIGENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEM OF ADVERTISING FOR SOCIAL NETWORKS 13

Jose Aguilar received the engineer degree in system Gerardo Garcia received the engineer degree in
engineering from the Universidad de los Andes, system engineering from the Universidad de los
Merida, Venezuela, in 1987, the M.Sc. degree in Andes, Merida, Venezuela, in 2012.
computer sciences from the University Paul Sabatier, He is currently a Consultant in the use of social
Toulouse, France, in 1991, and the Ph.D. degree networks for companies.
in computer sciences from the University Rene
Descartes, Paris, France, in 1995.
He was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the
Department of Computer Science, University of
Houston, Houston, TX, USA. He is currently a
Researcher with the Microcomputer and Distributed
Systems Center (CEMSID), University of Los Andes.
Dr. Aguilar is a member of the Mérida Science Academy and the Interna-
tional Technical Committee of the IEEE-CIS on Artificial Neural Network.