The (Marginal) Value of a Search Ad: An Online Causal Framework for Repeated Second-price Auctions
Existing auto-bidding algorithms in digital advertising often treat the value of an ad opportunity as the revenue obtained when an ad is shown and/or clicked, and bid accordingly. This can lead to wasteful spending because the true value is the marginal gain from paid exposure: even without winning a sponsored slot, an advertiser may still earn revenue via an organic search result (e.g., on Google or Amazon). Motivated by recent work, we model ad value as a treatment effect--the outcome difference between winning and losing the auction--and study online learning for bidding in second-price (Vickrey) auctions under this causal perspective. We develop algorithms that attain rate-optimal reg...
| Authors | Yuxiao Wen, Zihao Hu, Yanjun Han et al. |
|---|---|
| Primary category | cs.GT |
| Published | 3 May 2026 |
| Last updated at source | 3 May 2026 |
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