Optimization of column width in website layout for advertisement fit

Advertising is the basic source of income for many web businesses. Preparing website layout for the advertisements is a problem faced by many web designers. The ads and other content are placed in several columns. Usually column widths are chosen ad hoc to fit the widest advertising unit. To make a more informed decisions website column width selection is formulated in this paper as optimization problem. A method of selecting column widths for a given set of advertisement units is proposed. Ad unit combinations that fit the given column widths are generated by the improved Wang algorithm for two-dimensional stock cutting problem. Column widths are evaluated for several objective functions. Two approaches are proposed. The first constructs a Pareto frontier of column width combinations. The second calculates the optimum column widths with respect to a weighted linear function of the objectives. To justify the weights expert survey was conducted. Both approaches are examined on datasets of internet advertising units.