each engaged in six ecommerce Web searching tasks. We extracted these tasks from the transaction log of a Web search engine, so they represent actual ecommerce searching information needs. Using 60 organic and 30 sponsored Web links, the quality of the Web search engine results was controlled by switching nonsponsored and sponsored links on half of the tasks for each participant. This allowed f...

In this work, we evaluate variants of several information retrieval models from the classic BM25 model to Language Modeling approaches for retrieving relevant textual advertisements for Sponsored Search. Within the language modeling framework, we explore implicit query expansion via translation tables derived from multiple sources and propose a novel method for directly estimating the probabili...

This paper presents a game theoretic analysis of the generalized second price auction that the company Overture operated in 2004 to sell sponsored search listings on search engines. We construct a model that embodies few prior assumptions about parameters, and we present results that indicate that this model has under quite general assumptions a multiplicity of Nash equilibria. We then analyze ...

In sponsored search advertising (SSA), keywords serve as the basic unit of business model, linking three stakeholders: consumers, advertisers and engines. This paper presents an overarching framework for keyword decisions that highlights touchpoints in management, including four levels decisions, i.e., domain-specific pool generation, targeting, assignment grouping, adjustment. Using this frame...

Stochastic multi-armed bandit (MAB) mechanisms are widely used in sponsored search auctions, crowdsourcing, online procurement, etc. Existing stochastic MAB mechanisms with a deterministic payment rule, proposed in the literature, necessarily suffer a regret of Ω(T ), where T is the number of time steps. This happens because the existing mechanisms consider the worst case scenario where the mea...

Sponsored search is a rapidly growing business and there is tremendous industry and research interest in improving the designs and functioning of the sponsored search marketplace. Launching new designs and enhanced features for the sponsored search marketplace requires careful evaluation of their potential consequences to user experience and financial impact on the multiple parties (advertisers...