"You eat with your eyes first": Optimizing Yelp Image Advertising

Abstract: A business's online, photographic representation can play a crucial role in its success or failure. We use Yelp's image dataset and star-based review system as a measurement of an image's effectiveness in promoting a business. After preprocessing the Yelp dataset, we use transfer learning to train a classifier which accepts Yelp images and predicts star-ratings. Additionally, we then train a GAN to qualitatively investigate the common properties of highly effective images. We achieve 90-98% accuracy in classifying simplified star ratings for various image categories and observe that images containing blue skies, open surroundings, and many windows are correlated with higher Yelp reviews.