Editing Auto-Enhance in the Tile Configuration Screen
- Ben Clark
Editing Auto-Enhance (Multi-Armed Bandit) settings and Variants in Rule Designer
The Auto-Enhance (Multi-Armed Bandit) uses machine learning algorithms to dynamically allocate traffic to variants that are performing well, while allocating less traffic to variants that are under performing whilst still allowing them opportunities to improve.
When initially started the Auto-Enhance will process those rows going through the Rule, assign Variants and count Variant Attempts and Successes.
Variants: Values the Auto-Enhance could use
Attempts: How many times the Auto-Enhance attempted to provide the value
Successes: How many times the value was collected by a success step
Until a statistically significant "winner" is calculated the Auto-Enhance will continue with an even split to all active variants.
Once a Statistically Significant winner is calculated (based on the Significance value selected) the Auto-Enhance will start to prioritise traffic to the winner based on the frequency selected.
As the Auto-Enhance continues to work it can (at a frequency you select) pick a non-winner to test. This allows you to continually test the incumbent winners against previous losing options and any new variants ensuring the winner you have at any given time is tested to ensure it's still the best one.
If the Rule is stopped and restarted it will recalculate the results based on any previously collected variants and select a winner if it can. If not it will continue with an even split.
For example a website has a homepage banner and has to make a decision about which banner to display to a visitor to encourage a booking:
10% of the time, you split your traffic equally between the four versions of a website banner
For the rest 90% of the time, you send traffic to the best performing banner
The settings that control this optimisation are initially configured within the Kettle Multi-Armed Bandit steps within the Templates. These are also configurable within Rule Designer allowing users to tweak the settings or easily change the Variants. Where a Tile contains one or more Auto-Enhance steps an icon will appear on the top of the tile highlighting they exist and showing how many are present. Clicking through allows you to change the values.
Mode and step at the top allows you to see the MAB steps available.
Where a Select variant Mode is selected you have a number of different functional items that can be changed. These have been designed to be the same as the Kettle Plugin with the details highlighted here Alterian Multi-Armed Bandit Processor .
When setting up new Auto-Enhance Rules ensure the name and key are identical in the Select Variables, Attempts and Successes as this allows the reporting to work correctly.