Analysis of Sponsored Content in the Case of Competing Content Providers

Abstract

With a sponsored content plan in the internet market, the content provider (CP) can pay to the internet service provider (ISP) on behalf of the end-users the network subscription fees. As such, CP, ISP and end-users are incentive to participate in the sponsored content. In this paper, we propose an internet market model with sponsored content. Furthermore, we investigate the interactions among CPs based on a non-cooperative game in terms of pricing, credibility of content and number of sponsored content. Additionally, the existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium are proved through a detailed analysis. Based on the game properties, we propose a learning algorithm based on the best response dynamic that may lead the CPs to learn their strategies in a distributed manner. Numerical investigation shows the convergence of a proposed algorithm to the Nash equilibrium point and corroborates the fact that sponsoring content may improve the CPs outcome.