Illinois Genetic Algorithms Laboratory

Philipp Lenssen at blogscoped wonders if Google Ads could be using genetic algorithms to allow the software to figure out what Ads to show to users.

I wonder, with that massive amount of ads + searches Google has, if there’s some merit in allowing the software to figure it out for itself… evolutionary algorithms, self-learning style. Search sessions are automatically grouped into general patterns, and then random ads are presented, and when an ad performs well, more ads from that ad segment will be displayed next time, and so on, causing a “survival of the fittest ad” environment. Then when Google meets the press in 2012, they can tell the journalists, “We don’t have a clue anymore how our ads work, but click-throughs are higher than ever.”