The (Marginal) Value of a Search Ad: An Online Causal Framework for Repeated Second-price Auctions
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Abstract (arXiv)
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 regret under several feedback models. A key ingredient exploits the information revealed by the second-price payment rule, which strictly improves regret relative to analogous learning problems in first-price auctions.
Key facts. Cited by 2 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026). Builds on 13 of its 37 references that are in the map. First posted on arXiv 3 May 2026.
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13 of 37 references.
References · 13
- 2015Online learning in repeated auctionscited by 39
- 2017Learning to Bid Without Knowing your Valuecited by 34
- 2020Optimal No-regret Learning in Repeated First-price Auctionscited by 33
- 2020Learning to Bid Optimally and Efficiently in Adversarial First-price Auctionscited by 33
- 2021Learning to Bid in Contextual First Price Auctionscited by 19
- 2023The Role of Transparency in Repeated First-Price Auctions with Unknown Valuationscited by 15
- 2015Lift-Based Bidding in Ad Selectioncited by 8
- 2019Online Causal Inference for Advertising in Real-Time Bidding Auctionscited by 6
- 2025Joint Value Estimation and Bidding in Repeated First-Price Auctionscited by 6
- 2022Incrementality Bidding via Reinforcement Learning under Mixed and Delayed Rewardscited by 5
- 2024Stochastic contextual bandits with graph feedback: from independence number to MAS numbercited by 5
- 2022Incrementality Bidding and Attributioncited by 3
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Citing papers per year: 2026: 2.
2 papers.