Related papers: Computational Analysis of Perfect-Information Posi…
Standard ad auction formats do not immediately extend to settings where multiple size configurations and layouts are available to advertisers. In these settings, the sale of web advertising space increasingly resembles a combinatorial…
Combinatorial auctions are formulated as frustrated lattice gases on sparse random graphs, allowing the determination of the optimal revenue by methods of statistical physics. Transitions between computationally easy and hard regimes are…
This paper presents models for predicted click-through rates in position auctions that take into account two possibilities that are not normally considered---that the identities of ads shown in other positions may affect the probability…
Internet ad auctions have evolved from a few lines of text to richer informational layouts that include images, sitelinks, videos, etc. Ads in these new formats occupy varying amounts of space, and an advertiser can provide multiple…
Bidding in simultaneous auctions is challenging because an agent's value for a good in one auction may depend on the uncertain outcome of other auctions: the so-called exposure problem. Given the gap in understanding of general simultaneous…
In this study, we apply reinforcement learning techniques and propose what we call reinforcement mechanism design to tackle the dynamic pricing problem in sponsored search auctions. In contrast to previous game-theoretical approaches that…
Budget constraints are ubiquitous in online advertisement auctions. To manage these constraints and smooth out the expenditure across auctions, the bidders (or the platform on behalf of them) often employ pacing: each bidder is assigned a…
In programmatic advertising, ad slots are usually sold using second-price (SP) auctions in real-time. The highest bidding advertiser wins but pays only the second-highest bid (known as the winning price). In SP, for a single item, the…
Auctions play an important role in electronic commerce, and have been used to solve problems in distributed computing. Automated approaches to designing effective auction mechanisms are helpful in reducing the burden of traditional game…
In this paper, we investigate the computation of second-price pacing equilibria (SPPEs), a foundational model in online advertising auctions. We present a polynomial-time algorithm for computing exact SPPEs in instances with a constant…
Digital advertising platforms and publishers sell ad inventory that conveys targeting information, such as demographic, contextual, or behavioral audience segments, to advertisers. While revealing this information improves ad relevance, it…
We study auction design when a seller relies on machine-learning predictions of bidders' valuations that may be unreliable. Motivated by modern ML systems that are often accurate but occasionally fail in a way that is essentially…
We present a deterministic exploration mechanism for sponsored search auctions, which enables the auctioneer to learn the relevance scores of advertisers, and allows advertisers to estimate the true value of clicks generated at the auction…
Modern commercial Internet search engines display advertisements along side the search results in response to user queries. Such sponsored search relies on market mechanisms to elicit prices for these advertisements, making use of an…
We study the optimal placement of advertisements for interactive platforms like conversational AI assistants. Importantly, conversations add a feature absent in canonical search markets -- time. The evolution of a conversation is…
Sponsored search auctions are commonly modeled as an assignment of a fixed set of slots (positions) to a set of advertisers, with welfare maximization being reducible to a standard matching problem. Motivated by modern ad formats, we study…
In mechanism design, it is challenging to design the optimal auction with correlated values in general settings. Although value distribution can be further exploited to improve revenue, the complex correlation structure makes it hard to…
In a sponsored search auction the advertisement slots on a search result page are generally ordered by click-through rate. Bidders have a valuation, which is usually assumed to be linear in the click-through rate, a budget constraint, and…
Sponsored Search Auctions (SSAs) arguably represent the problem at the intersection of computer science and economics with the deepest applications in real life. Within the realm of SSAs, the study of the effects that showing one ad has on…
We study revenue optimization pricing algorithms for repeated posted-price auctions where a seller interacts with a single strategic buyer that holds a fixed private valuation. We show that, in the case when both the seller and the buyer…