On December 6 2007, Microsoft Research has awarded $50.000 to CWI researchers Sander Bohte, Nicole Immorlica, Vangelis Markakis and Han La Poutré for research on Socially Structured User Behavior and Externalities in Sponsored Search Auctions. Based on the vast data collected by Microsoft Live Search and Microsoft AdCenter, the research aims to develop new insights on how and when users click on the advertisements shown along search engine results.
The group will study two issues related to optimizing the allocation of sponsored search ads for a specific querying user: first, they will attempt to exploit the fact that a user is likely to behave like other users they know. The challenge is to derive the relevant 'social structure' from the Microsoft search logs. And second, they wish to refine the ad allocation model to account for the fact that the advertisement a user is likely to click on, is influenced by the content of other, surrounding advertisements, so-called 'externalities'. The researchers will have access to Microsoft data which refers to 100 million entries in the adCenter query logs and 15 million entries in Live Search query logs that contain data on what exactly users were searching for.
The research will be carried out starting early 2008. The group expects to have publishable results by the end of November 2008.
