An incentive-compatible revenue-sharing mechanism for the economic sustainability of multi-domain search based on advertising

Abstract

Multi-domain search engines decompose complex queries addressing several issues at a time into sub-queries, and forwards them to one or more domain-specific content providers, typically implemented as Web services. This enables complex searches (e.g., vacation planning, composed of a hotel, flight, and car search), and allows users to receive aggregated and high quality results from a variety of sources. We focus on the design of a revenue sharing mechanism for multi-domain search, considering the general setting in which different actors (content providers, advertising providers, hybrid content+advertising providers, and content integrators) are involved in the search results generation. The design of such a mechanism is paramount for the economic sustainability of multi-domain search. Our revenue sharing mechanism extends the existing sponsored search auctions by supporting heterogeneous participants and allowing the redistribution of monetary values to the different actors. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2012.