A Truthful Mechanism for Offline Ad Slot Scheduling

• Published in: Algorithmic Game Theory Vol. 4997; pp. 182 - 193
• Main Authors: Feldman, Jon, Muthukrishnan, S., Nikolova, Evdokia, Pál, Martin
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Germany Springer Berlin / Heidelberg 2008; Springer Berlin Heidelberg
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Dominant Strategy; Electronic Commerce; Feasible Schedule; Nash Equilibrium; Schedule Problem
• ISBN: 3540793089; 9783540793083
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-79309-0_17

We consider the Offline Ad Slot Scheduling problem, where advertisers must be scheduled to sponsored search slots during a given period of time. Advertisers specify a budget constraint, as well as a maximum cost per click, and may not be assigned to more than one slot for a particular search. We give a truthful mechanism under the utility model where bidders try to maximize their clicks, subject to their personal constraints. In addition, we show that the revenue-maximizing mechanism is not truthful, but has a Nash equilibrium whose outcome is identical to our mechanism. Our mechanism employs a descending-price auction that maintains a solution to a certain machine scheduling problem whose job lengths depend on the price, and hence are variable over the auction.