Computational analysis of perfect-information position auctions

  • Authors:

  • David Robert Martin Thompson;Kevin Leyton-Brown

  • Affiliations:

  • University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada;University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 10th ACM conference on Electronic commerce
  • Year:
  • 2009

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Abstract

Position auctions were widely used by search engines to sell keyword advertising before being well understood (and, indeed, studied) theoretically. To date, theorists have made significant progress, for example showing that a given auction is efficient or revenue-dominates a benchmark auction such as VCG. This paper augments that line of work, relying on computational equilibrium analysis. By computing Nash equilibria and calculating their expected revenue and social welfare, we can quantitatively answer questions that theoretical methods have not. Broadly, the questions we answer are: (1) How often do the theoretically predicted "good" (i.e., efficient, high-revenue) equilibria of GSP occur? (2) In models where GSP is known to be inefficient, how much welfare does it waste? We also use our data to examine the larger question of whether GSP is a good choice, compared with the alternatives.