---
title: What is Reinforcement learning for marketing?
url: https://markin.ai/glossary/reinforcement-learning-for-marketing
category: Decisioning and next best action
aliases: Contextual bandits
---

# Reinforcement learning for marketing

> Reinforcement learning treats customer decisions as a sequence, optimising cumulative long-term reward rather than the next click. In marketing it usually appears as contextual bandits, which balance exploiting the current best action against exploring alternatives that might be better.

## Why it matters for ARPU

Sequences matter for ARPU: the action that maximises this month can suppress next quarter. Optimising the trajectory is what separates lifetime value from short-term conversion.

## Related terms

- [Multi-armed bandit](https://markin.ai/glossary/multi-armed-bandit), A multi-armed bandit allocates traffic adaptively toward variants that are performing well while continuing to sample the others.
- [Next best action](https://markin.ai/glossary/next-best-action), Next best action is the single intervention that maximises expected value for a specific customer at a specific moment, chosen across every available option including doing nothing.
- [Uplift model](https://markin.ai/glossary/uplift-model), An uplift model estimates the change in outcome caused by treating a customer, rather than the outcome itself.
- [Lifetime value](https://markin.ai/glossary/lifetime-value), Lifetime value is the discounted margin a business expects from a customer over the whole relationship.

## Go deeper

- [The next best action model](https://markin.ai/blog/next-best-action-model), Sequential decisioning explained.
- [Next best action marketing](https://markin.ai/blog/what-is-next-best-action), The pillar guide to per-customer, per-moment decisioning.

Source: https://markin.ai/glossary/reinforcement-learning-for-marketing