Online primal-dual algorithms for maximizing ad-auctions revenue

  • Authors:

  • Niv Buchbinder;Kamal Jain;Joseph Seffi Naor

  • Affiliations:

  • Computer Science Department, Technion, Haifa, Israel;Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA;Computer Science Department, Technion, Haifa, Israel

  • Venue:
  • ESA'07 Proceedings of the 15th annual European conference on Algorithms
  • Year:
  • 2007

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Abstract

We study the online ad-auctions problem introduced by Mehta et al. [15]. We design a (1 - 1/e)-competitive (optimal) algorithm for the problem, which is based on a clean primal-dual approach, matching the competitive factor obtained in [15]. Our basic algorithm along with its analysis are very simple. Our results are based on a unified approach developed earlier for the design of online algorithms [7,8]. In particular, the analysis uses weak duality rather than a tailor made (i.e., problem specific) potential function. We show that this approach is useful for analyzing other classical online algorithms such as ski rental and the TCP-acknowledgement problem. We are confident that the primal-dual method will prove useful in other online scenarios as well. The primal-dual approach enables us to extend our basic ad-auctions algorithm in a straight forward manner to scenarios in which additional information is available, yielding improved worst case competitive factors. In particular, a scenario in which additional stochastic information is available to the algorithm, a scenario in which the number of interested buyers in each product is bounded by some small number d, and a general risk management framework.