Predicting Current User Intent

with Contextual Markov Models

Julia Kiseleva, Hoang Thanh Lam, Mykola Pechenizkiy (TU/e)
Toon Calders (ULB)

CAPA project: http://www.win.tue.nl/~mpechen/projects/capa/

7 December 2013
DDDM@ICDM2013,
Dallas, TX, USA
 Outline
• What is predictive Web analytics
• Context-Aware Predictive Analytics framework
• User intent modeling
• Contextual Markov Models
• Case study, experimental results
• Conclusions and further ongoing work

DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 1

Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 Understanding user needs

DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 2

Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 Let’s give it a try…

DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 3

Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 User Intent Modeling: What?
• Next action prediction
– Click prediction in display advertising
– Drop out prediction
– Trail prediction
• Information need prediction:
– Navigational vs. explorative vs. purchase
– Open acronym based on context
• Type of product wanted
– Personalization based on context

DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 4

Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 User Intent Modeling: Why?
• To understand users and website usage
– redesign website, redirect flows,
– diversified search, recommendations
• To better use budget (pageviews)
– what (type of) ads to serve?
– brand awareness CPM, or convergence CPC
• To manipulate user – worth giving a promotion?
– personalize with intent of converging to a desired
action
– personalized suggestions based on user context

DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 5

Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 User Intent Modeling: How?
Training:
population Testing X'
(source) data y = L (X)
labels
2.
Application:
use L
for an unseen data

X Historical Model L y' = L (X')

data 1. training

y labels 2. application

label? y'
DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 6
Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 Context in IR & RecSys
• User Context
– Preferences, usage history, profiles
• Document/Product Context
– Meta-data, content features
• Task Context
– Current activity, location etc.
• Social Context
– Leveraging the social graph

DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 7

Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 Context in Diagnostics
Not predictive alone but a subset of features with the
contextual attribute(s) becomes (much) more predictive

Time of
the day
context

no context

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Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 Context in Marketing
P(Purchase|gender=“male”)=P(Purchase|gender=“female”)
ModelMale~f(relevance); ModelFemale~f(perceived value)

Male
don’t buy

gender Female
context don’t buy
relevance

no context gender buy

don’t

relevance
DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 9
Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 Context-Awareness as Meta-learning
Training:
population
Test
data
??
X'
labels
Environment/
Context
Application:

Historical
y' = Lj (X')
X Model L
data Lj <= G(X',E)
y labels

label? y'
DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 10
Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
Learning Classifiers & Context

DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 11

Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 Research Questions
• How to define the context (form and maintain contextual
categories) in web analytics?
• How to connect context with the prediction process in
predictive web analytics?
• How to integrate change detection mechanisms into the
prediction process in web analytics?
• How to ensure integration and feedback mechanisms
between change detection and context awareness
mechanisms?
• What should a reference architecture allowing to plug in
new context aware prediction techniques for a collection
of web analytics tasks look like?
DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 13
Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
• Context-aware
ranking of
search results
• Drop-out
prediction/pre
vention
• Next action
prediction
IEEE CBMS 2010 Handling Concept Drift in Medical Applications: Importance, Challenges and Solutions 14
Perth, Australia © M. Pechenizkiy and I. Zliobaite
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User Navigation Graph
Motivation for Contextual Markov Models
Useful Contexts:
E[M] < pc1*E[Mc1] + pc2*E[Mc2]
Why should it help?

Explicit contexts (user location)

Implicit contexts (inferred from clickstream)
 Implicit Context
c1 = c1 =
C = user type Novice Experienced
users users

Discover clusters in
the graph using
community
detection
algorithm

DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 19

Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 Dataset

Date May 2012

Source of Mastersportal.eu
information
#sessions 350.618
#requests 1.775.711

Publicly available at:

http://www.win.tue.nl/~mpechen/projects/capa
DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 20
Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 Accuracy Results

user location

user type

DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 21

Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
Global vs. explicit vs. implicit vs. random contexts

DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 22

Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 Conclusions
• We formulated context discovery as
optimization problem
• Our approach can be used to identify
useful contexts
• Experiments on a real dataset provide empirical
evidence that contextual Markov Models are more
accurate than global models
• Further (ongoing) work
– Temporal context discovery (TempWeb@WWW’2013)
– Multidimensional vertical and horizontal clustering on
the user navigation graph
DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 23
Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 Change of Intent as Context Switch
Context ``Find information”

Context ``Buy product”

Refine Product
Search Click Payment Search Click
Search View

t0 t1 t2 t3 t4 t5 t6
Timeline
What is next?
Change of intent?

DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 24

Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 User next action prediction
Refine Product
Search
Search
Click
View
Payment Click ?

• What the context is attached to?

o Single action?
o Session/trail? (user)
o A group of sessions (space/time)
• Pattern-mining based approach

Collaboration is welcome!
DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 25
Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 Designing Context-awareness

Context-aware Adaptation
Feature set expansion
Model selection/weighting
Feature set selection
Model adjustment Output correction
Instance set selection

Predictive
Training data Predictions
model(s)

if (context == “spring”) if (context == “spring”) if (context == “spring”)

select instances(“spring”) select models (“spring”) score += 0.1*score

DDDM@ICDM2013 Predicting Current User Intent with Contextual Markov Models 26

Dec 7, 2013 Mykola Pechenizkiy, Eindhoven University of Technology
 Designing Context-awareness
Context mining:
how to discover context
Feature set expansion
Model selection/weighting
Feature set selection
Model adjustment Output correction
Instance set selection
[Un]
How to Definitions/
[Semi]Super
define properties/
vised
context utilities
methods
Contextual features Features not predictive alone, Subgroup discovery
Contextual categories but increasing predictive power AntiLDA
of other features Uplift modeling
Descriptors explaining a Actionable attributes
significant group of instances
having some distinct behaviour
 Horizontal Partitioning

Session 1 Search Refine Search Click on Banner Product View Payment

Users
Session 3 Product Payment
from
View
Europe
Session 3 Search Refine Search Refine Search Click on
Banner
Session 4 Search Refine Search Click on Banner Product View Payment
Users
from
Session 5 Product Click on Banner Search South
View America
Horizontal Partitioning
 Vertical Partitioning
Two types of behavior:
Ready to buy – (Product View, Payment)
Just browsing – (Search, Refine Search, Click on
Banner)
Session 1 Search Refine Click on Product Payment
Search Banner View
Session 2 Product Payment
View
Session 3 Search Refine Refine Click on
Search Search Banner
Session 4 Search Refine Click on Product Payment
Search Banner View
Session 5 Product Click on Search
View Banner
 Vertical Partitioning
Two types of behavior:
Ready to buy – (Product View, Payment)
Just browsing – (Search, Refine Search, Click on
Banner)
Session 1 Search Refine Click on Product Payment
Search Banner View
Session 2 Product Payment
View
Session 3 Search Refine Refine Click on
Search Search Banner
Session 4 Search Refine Click on Product Payment
Search Banner View
Session 5 Product Click on Search
View Banner