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Online Causal Inference for Advertising in Real-Time Bidding Auctions

Caio Waisman, Harikesh S. Nair, Carlos Carrion

arXiv 22 Aug 2019 · Machine Learning · publishedMarketing Science (2024) · 9 citations (OpenAlex)

arXiv:1908.08600 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

Real-time bidding (RTB) systems, which utilize auctions to allocate user impressions to competing advertisers, continue to enjoy success in digital advertising. Assessing the effectiveness of such advertising remains a challenge in research and practice. This paper proposes a new approach to perform causal inference on advertising bought through such mechanisms. Leveraging the economic structure of first- and second-price auctions, we first show that the effects of advertising are identified by the optimal bids. Hence, since these optimal bids are the only objects that need to be recovered, we introduce an adapted Thompson sampling (TS) algorithm to solve a multi-armed bandit problem that succeeds in recovering such bids and, consequently, the effects of advertising while minimizing the costs of experimentation. We derive a regret bound for our algorithm which is order optimal and use data from RTB auctions to show that it outperforms commonly used methods that estimate the effects of advertising.

Citation extraction

72
references
102
in-text mentions
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distinct cited
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self-citations
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main-text words

appendix boundary found by appendix_command · 74% of the source is main text. Read the extracted text to check this.

Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Bompaire, M., Gilotte, A., and Heymann, B (2021) Causal models for real time bidding with repeated user interactions0.8307286%
2Tunuguntla, S. and Hoban, P. R (2021) A near-optimal bidding strategy for real-time display advertising auctions0.7374275%
3Moriwaki, D., Hayakawa, Y., Munemasa, I., Saito, Y., and Matsui, A (2020) Unbiased lift-based bidding system0.69351100%
4Nie, X., Tian, X., Taylor, J., and Zou, J (2018) Why adaptively collected data have negative bias and how to correct for it0.58531100%
5Waisman, C., Nair, H. S., Carrion, C., and Xu, N (2019) Online inference for advertising auctions self0.58531100%
6Xu, J., Shao, X., Ma, J., Lee, Kuang-chih, Q. H., and Lu, Q (2016) Lift-based bidding in ad selection0.58531100%
7Albert, J. H. and Chib, S (1993) Bayesian analysis of binary and polychotomous response data0.5112250%
8Cai, H., Ren, K., Zhang, W., Malialis, K., Wang, J., Yu, Y., and Guo… (2017) Real-time bidding by reinforcement learning in display advertising0.5112250%
9Ju, N., Hu, D., Henderson, A., and Hong, L (2019) A sequential test for selecting the better variant: Online A/B testing, adaptive allocation, and continuous monitoring0.51121100%
10Kallus, N (2018) Instrument-armed bandits0.51121100%

Showing the top 10 of 72 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Close Enough? A Large-Scale Exploration of Non-Experimental Approaches to Advertising Measurement0.40511
2Multi-cell experiments for marginal treatment effect estimation of digital ads0.40511
3Profit-Aligned CATE Estimation: Reconciling Policy Learning and Inference0.40511