Constrained Preferential Bayesian Optimization and Its Application in Banner Ad Design

Constrained Preferential Bayesian Optimization and Its Application in Banner Ad Design

Koki Iwai, Yusuke Kumagae, Yuki Koyama, Masahiro Hamasaki, Masataka Goto

Proceedings of the Thirty-Fourth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence
Main Track. Pages 4155-4163. https://doi.org/10.24963/ijcai.2025/463

Preferential Bayesian optimization (PBO) is a variant of Bayesian optimization that observes relative preferences (e.g., pairwise comparisons) instead of direct objective values, making it especially suitable for human-in-the-loop scenarios. However, real-world optimization tasks often involve inequality constraints, which existing PBO methods have not yet addressed. To fill this gap, we propose constrained preferential Bayesian optimization (CPBO), an extension of PBO that incorporates inequality constraints for the first time. Specifically, we present a novel acquisition function for this purpose. Our technical evaluation shows that our CPBO method successfully identifies optimal solutions by focusing on exploring feasible regions. As a practical application, we also present a designer-in-the-loop system for banner ad design using CPBO, where the objective is the designer's subjective preference, and the constraint ensures a target predicted click-through rate. We conducted a user study with professional ad designers, demonstrating the potential benefits of our approach in guiding creative design under real-world constraints.
Keywords:
Humans and AI: HAI: Human-computer interaction
Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: CSO: Constraint optimization problems
Humans and AI: HAI: Human-AI collaboration