An Incentive-Compatible Revenue-Sharing Mechanism for the Economic Sustainability of Multi-domain Search Based on Advertising

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.

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