平台用可信信号揭示广告点击率,最大化拍卖收入。
Optimal Calibrated Signaling in Digital Auctions
- 设计私有信号使竞标者准确估计广告点击率。
- 信号可提取全部或超额利润,取决于市场条件。
- 适合研究广告拍卖与信息透明的学者与从业者。
在数字广告中,平台通过实时拍卖分配广告位,广告商通常依赖自动出价代理来优化投标。与实物商品拍卖不同,广告位价值不确定,取决于未知的点击率(CTR)。尽管平台可利用专有机器学习算法更准确地估计CTR,但这些算法对广告商不透明。这种信息不对称引发关键问题:平台如何披露信息以实现可信且收益最优?本文提出校准信号机制,每位无先验的竞标者接收一个私有信号,真实反映广告位的条件期望点击率。该信号具有可信性,使竞标者能形成无偏的价值估计,即使无法访问平台内部算法。本文研究了第二价格拍卖下平台最优校准信号的设计。第一个主要结果完全刻画了最优校准信号的结构,并可高效计算。结果表明,该信号可提取全部盈余甚至超出,取决于特定市场条件。第二个主要结果是满足个体理性(IR)约束的近似最优校准信号的全多项式时间近似方案(FPTAS)。核心技术贡献包括:将平台问题重构成包含最优传输和校准可行性约束的两阶段优化问题;以及一种新颖的相关计划,用于构造次高报价的最优分布。
原文摘要 · Abstract (English)
In digital advertising, online platforms allocate ad impressions through real-time auctions, where advertisers typically rely on autobidding agents to optimize bids on their behalf. Unlike traditional auctions for physical goods, the value of an ad impression is uncertain and depends on the unknown click-through rate (CTR). While platforms can estimate CTRs more accurately using proprietary machine learning algorithms, these estimates/algorithms remain opaque to advertisers. This information asymmetry naturally raises the following questions: how can platforms disclose information in a way that is both credible and revenue-optimal? We address these questions through calibrated signaling, where each prior-free bidder receives a private signal that truthfully reflects the conditional expected CTR of the ad impression. Such signals are trustworthy and allow bidders to form unbiased value estimates, even without access to the platform's internal algorithms. We study the design of platform-optimal calibrated signaling in the context of second-price auction. Our first main result fully characterizes the structure of the optimal calibrated signaling, which can also be computed efficiently. We show that this signaling can extract the full surplus -- or even exceed it -- depending on a specific market condition. Our second main result is an FPTAS for computing an approximately optimal calibrated signaling that satisfies an IR condition. Our main technical contributions are: a reformulation of the platform's problem as a two-stage optimization problem that involves optimal transport subject to calibration feasibility constraints on the bidders' marginal bid distributions; and a novel correlation plan that constructs the optimal distribution over second-highest bids.
Thank you to arXiv for use of its open access interoperability. PaperDance 不是 arXiv 官方产品;中文卡片由大模型生成,请以原文为准。