Contextual recommender problems [extended abstract]
The contextual recommender task is the problem of making useful offers, e.g., placing ads or related links on a web page, based on the context information, e.g., contents of the page and information about the user visiting, and information on the available alternatives, i.e., the advertisements or relevant links. In the case of ads for example, the goal is to select ads that result in high click rates, where the (ad) click rate is some unknown function of the attributes of the context and ad. We describe the task and make connections to related problems including recommender and multi-armed bandit problems.