Sponsored Question Answering

TL;DR

This paper introduces a formal framework for sponsored question answering platforms, integrating advertising with answer presentation, and demonstrates that truthful bidding is incentivized, leading to a stable auction environment similar to VCG mechanisms.

Contribution

It provides the first formal analysis of sponsored QA platforms, modeling their auction mechanisms and proving properties like truthfulness and stability.

Findings

Advertisers are incentivized to bid truthfully.

The auction mechanism is stable and shares properties with VCG auctions.

The platform effectively combines organic answers with sponsored ads.

Abstract

The potential move from search to question answering (QA) ignited the question of how should the move from sponsored search to sponsored QA look like. We present the first formal analysis of a sponsored QA platform. The platform fuses an organic answer to a question with an ad to produce a so called {\em sponsored answer}. Advertisers then bid on their sponsored answers. Inspired by Generalized Second Price Auctions (GSPs), the QA platform selects the winning advertiser, sets the payment she pays, and shows the user the sponsored answer. We prove an array of results. For example, advertisers are incentivized to be truthful in their bids; i.e., set them to their true value of the sponsored answer. The resultant setting is stable with properties of VCG auctions.