Theoretical game analysis of position auctions according to the Vickrey–Clarke–Groves mechanism with two-stage ranking

Abstract

Different types of position auctions are considered. A position auction is a mechanism for the allocation of advertising space in search engine results to a user-defined query. Advertisers make bids they are willing to pay the search engine for a click to their website. The search engine determines whose advertisements will get to the page and in what position, based on the bids of all the advertisers. Different types of such auctions are discussed using the example of the Yandex search engine based on the Vickrey–Clarke–Grovesmechanism. The main result is a formalization of the concept of an auction with two-stage ranking and its balance test.