Title: Theoretical challenges in the design of advertisement auctions


Abstract:

The Internet is probably the most important technological creation of
our times. It provides many immensely useful services to the masses for
free, including such essentials as web search, web mail, and web
portals. These services are expensive to maintain, and depend upon
advertisement revenue to remain free. One of the most effective ways to
allocate advertisement space on the web is through auctions. In this
talk, I will discuss some of the theoretical challenges in the design of
online advertisement auctions, and will present some of our recent
results addressing these issues. In particular, I will focus on
mechanism design for budget-constrained bidders, multi-unit auctions for
perishable goods with unknown supply, and dynamics of bid optimization.