Tianchi x MSU Hackathon - IJCAI 2018 Alimama International Advertising Algorithm Competition

Alibaba and the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) came together to develop a hackathon event to disrupt the advertising industry through breakthrough algorithms. Alimama, Alibaba's marketing technology and big data platform, will be one of the main organizers of this hackathon.

Teams will compete for two days to develop breakthrough algorithms, get access to real-business data sets, and learning cutting-edge coding skills. What's more, winning teams have the opportunity to earn cash prizes and special access to Alibaba Cloud's resources.

<b>Day 1 (April 20, 2018)</b>

<b>18:00 – 23:00 MSK - Auditorium MSU Main building</b>

Time

Agenda

17:45 – 18:00

Event registration

18:00 – 18:15

Opening ceremony. Welcome speech by Professor Fedyanin

18:15 – 18:30

Speech by Alibaba Tianchi BD Team Diego Garcia

18:30 – 19:00

Speech by MSU Professor specialist in machine learning (mini-lecture)

19:00 – 20:00

Speech by Alibaba Data Scientist, recommendations and hacks for participants

20:00 – 20:30

Break

20:30 – 23:00

Hackathon starts! 60 people capacity offline + online participants

(held at hackathon war room)

23:00

End of Day 1

<b>Day 2 (April 21, 2018)</b>

<b>10:00 – 18:00 MSK - MSU</b>

10:00 – 10:30

Coffee and continuation of hackathon

13:00 – 13:30

Lunch

13:30 – 17:00

Hackathon

17:00 – 17:45

Hackathon ends. Closing ceremony and awards

Closing remarks

<b>First place – USD $500</b> + direct qualification to IJCAI-18 global competition semi-final + 1 hour coaching with Alibaba manager + certificate + gift

<b>Second place – USD $300</b> + 1 hour coaching with Alibaba manager + certificate + gift

<b>Third place – USD $200</b> + 1 hour coaching with Alibaba manager + certificate + gift

Sponsored search is one of the most popular marketing approaches in today’s internet ecosystem. Merchants (advertisers) set several keywords for their products, and these products will be presented to the customers who search these keywords. By the end of 2017, the gross revenue from sponsored search has been more than 100 billion, which exceeds 50% of the overall incomes of internet advertising. Sponsored search contributes the majority of revenue for most Internet companies, such as Google and Facebook. Due to its technical challenges and commercial values, sponsored search has been widely studied in the industrial and research areas all over the world.

The conversion rate (CVR) in sponsored search is defined as the probability of a user to purchase the displayed item after clicking this item. CVR indicates customers' satisfaction to the displayed items, shops and the advertising creative. Estimating the CVR accurately facilitates the search engines to reach more potential customers, increases the return on investment (ROI) for advertisers, and improves the user experience during online shopping.

<b>Application Deadline</b>: April 23, 2018

<b>Eligibility</b>: Any team with at most 3 members

<b>Awards</b>: Over USD 20,000 and travel support to present winning teams’ solutions on IJCAI-18, which will be held in Stockholm in July, 2018.

<b>First place – USD 10,000</b> + USD 3,000 in travel sponsorship + ticket to IJCAI-18 main meeting (Stockholm, July 2018)

<b>Second place – USD 6,000</b> + USD 3,000 in travel sponsorship

<b>Third place – USD 4,000</b> + USD 3,000 in travel sponsorship

Special award* 1 – USD 4,000

Special award* 2 – USD 4,000

* We will select 2 teams from the top 4-20 teams based on their submission materials (code + solution report + presentation slides) for the special award.

<b>Sponsors and Partners</b>: Alimama (Alibaba Group’s Advertising Unit), IJCAI 2018 &amp; Alibaba Cloud Tianchi, Moscow State University (MSU)