This paper provides a comprehensive study of the structure and dynamics of online advertising markets, based on a dataset of sponsored search queries provided by Microsoft Research. The study was performed using techniques from agent-based computing, data mining and from the emergent discipline of complex systems analysis. First, we look at how the display rank of a URL link influences its clic...

In sponsored search advertising (SSA), advertisers need to select keywords and determine matching types for selected simultaneously, i.e., keyword targeting. An optimal targeting strategy guarantees reaching the right population effectively. This paper aims address problem, which is a challenging task because of incomplete information historical performance indices high uncertainty in SSA envir...

Most Web search tools integrate sponsored results with results from their internal editorial database in providing results to users. The goal of this research is to get a better idea of how much of the screen real estate displays “real” editorial results as compared to sponsored results. The overall average results are that 40% of all results presented on the first screen are “real” results, an...

In this research, we analyze the relationship among (1) the performance metrics of a sponsored search campaign, (2) the gender orientation of queries, and (3) the occurrence of branded terms in queries. The aim of this research is to investigate the effectiveness of increased personalization of search engine advertising in order to improve the consumer’s online experience. We segregate keyphras...

Title of dissertation: MODELS FOR BUDGET CONSTRAINED AUCTIONS: AN APPLICATION TO SPONSORED SEARCH & OTHER AUCTIONS Abhishek Pani, Doctor of Philosophy, 2010 Dissertation directed by: Professor Subramanian Raghavan Robert H. Smith School of Business The last decade has seen the emergence of auction mechanisms for pricing and allocating goods on the Internet. A successful application area for auc...

First we prove the important result stated last lecture about sponsored search auctions. Recall the setup: there are k slots with click-through-rates (CTRs) α1 ≥ α2 ≥ · · · ≥ αk, and each bidder i = 1, 2, . . . , n has a private valuation per-click vi. (Bids and prices are also per-click.) Our first attempt to generalize the Vickrey auction to sponsored search results in the “Generalized Second...

We estimate a structural model of a sponsored search auction model. The econometric model matches two pieces of data for each auction: (i) the allocation of sponsored search listing to the bidders; and (ii) the per-click prices paid by the winners. To accommodate the “position paradox”, our model relaxes the assumption of decreasing click volumes with position ranks, which is often assumed in t...

Sponsored search mechanisms, where advertisers bid for better placement in the listing of search results on search services such as Yahoo! and Google integrate the benefits of online search with advertising, and have emerged as the dominant revenue model for online search engines. Interestingly, Yahoo! and Google employ different mechanisms to determine the placement of bidders’ advertisements....