Can Visible Cues of Search Results Tell Vendors\u27 Reliability?

A search engine provides two distinct types of results, organic and paid, each of which uses different mechanisms for selecting and ranking relevant Web pages for a query. For an e-commerce query, vendors represented by websites in these organic and paid results are expected to have varying reliability ratings, such as a satisfactory or unsatisfactory score from the Business Bureau (BBB) based on overall customer experiences. In this paper we empirically examine how vendors’ reliability ratings in BBB are associated with cues (such as type of result, relative price, number of sites selling the product) that can be observed or derived from search results, and further we attempt to predict vendors’ BBB reliability ratings using those cues

Experimental Evaluation of Sponsored Search Auction Mechanisms

The theory of sponsored search has been developing rapidly although with disagreement in scientific circles on answers to some basic questions about sponsored search. This study focuses on two of these questions, namely, if a search engine seeks to maximize profits, 1) what should its pricing policy be and 2) what should its ranking policy be. This paper uses experiments with economically motivated human subjects to address these questions. We evaluate six different sponsored search auction formats with two different pricing policies (Pay-per-transaction & Pay-per-click) and three different ranking policies (Rank by relevance, Rank by click-through rate, & Rank by both relevance and click-through rate). Our results suggest that Pay-per-click is superior and the reason behind its superiority is behavioral in nature whereas the ranking policy has significant effect on search engine revenue and advertiser profit

When Does Brand Bidding Pay Off (Even) If Website Competition is Low?

Many companies place advertisements on search engine result pages, a practice referred to as search engine advertising (SEA). If their website also appears among the organic results, it is questionable whether SEA makes sense: Free clicks may be substituted by costly clicks on the advertisement (paid result). We propose a model that determines when paid results complement organic results and when they cannibalize them. The model explains both interaction effects by the characteristics of the triggering keyword and the specificity of the advertisement. We evaluate the model in a field experiment in the context of a quasi-monopolistic company and approx. nine million search queries that contain its brand names (brand bidding). This helps to reduce possible biases from competition and user heterogeneity. Preliminary results suggest that superior net effects can be achieved by placing ads for search queries that indicate a navigational or transactional search intention compared to informational searches

ONLINE RETAIL KEYWORD CHARACTERISTICS AND SEARCH MARKETING PERFORMANCE

To make judicious budget and resource allocation decisions, it is essential to understand the characteristics and performance of keywords used by target shoppers. Taking the approach of understanding consumers’ information needs, we construct a goal-related keyword characterization framework. Most search keywords exhibit more than one of the following characteristics - retailer specific, brand specific, product specific, feature related, or shopping intention. We analyze search engine ranking, click-through, and revenue data associated with visitor-disclosed search keywords from a top Web-only retailer over one year. Our findings show the interesting impacts of both keyword characteristics and dual-appearance of paid and organic advertisements on search marketing performance. The contributions of the research include a comprehensive search keyword characterization framework, and the analysis of the relationships between keyword characteristics and search performance. These findings have strong implications for search marketing decisions

Search Engine Advertising Adoption and Utilization: An Empirical Investigation of Inflectional Factors

© Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. Search engine advertising (SEA) is a prominent source of revenue for search engine companies, and also a solution for businesses to promote their visibility on the web. However, there is little academic research available about the factors and the extent to which they may influence businesses’ decision to adopt SEA. Building on Theory of Planned Behavior, Technology Acceptance Model, and Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology, this study develops a context-specific model for understanding the factors that influence the decision of businesses to use SEA. Using structural equation modeling and survey data collected from 142 businesses, this research finds that the intention of businesses to use SEA is directly influenced by four factors: (i) attitude toward SEA, (ii) subjective norms, (iii) perceived control over SEA, and (iv) perceived benefits of SEA in terms of increasing web traffic, increasing sales and creating awareness. Furthermore, the research we discover six additional factors that have an indirect influence: (i) trust in search engines, (ii) perceived risk of SEA, (iii) ability to manage keywords and bids, (iv) ability to analyze and monitor outcomes, (v) advertising expertise, and (vi) using external experts

Influence of Regulatory Fit Theory on Persuasion from Google Ads: An Eye Tracking Study

Search engine marketing accounts for a high percentage of investment in platforms such as Google. Several studies have confirmed that users have a negative bias towards advertisements, so we apply social psychology theories via the elaboration probability model in this analysis. In this research, we modify the types of ads shown on Google’s results pages using the regulatory focus and fit and message framing theory to study attentional and behavioral responses with eye-tracking technology and cognitive responses from self-report measures. The results confirm a negative bias towards ads and a preference for organic results. Although promotion-framed ads seem to be more persuasive than neutral and prevention-framed ads, it was not possible to prove compliance with regulatory fit in this field through survey-based studies.Spanish National R+D+I Research Program - NeuroTourism project (grant no. ECO2017-88458-R)Andalusian R+D+I Research Program - “Research in NeuroSOCOM” project (grant no. B-SEJ-209-UGR18

Ranking for Relevance and Display Preferences in Complex Presentation Layouts

Learning to Rank has traditionally considered settings where given the relevance information of objects, the desired order in which to rank the objects is clear. However, with today's large variety of users and layouts this is not always the case. In this paper, we consider so-called complex ranking settings where it is not clear what should be displayed, that is, what the relevant items are, and how they should be displayed, that is, where the most relevant items should be placed. These ranking settings are complex as they involve both traditional ranking and inferring the best display order. Existing learning to rank methods cannot handle such complex ranking settings as they assume that the display order is known beforehand. To address this gap we introduce a novel Deep Reinforcement Learning method that is capable of learning complex rankings, both the layout and the best ranking given the layout, from weak reward signals. Our proposed method does so by selecting documents and positions sequentially, hence it ranks both the documents and positions, which is why we call it the Double-Rank Model (DRM). Our experiments show that DRM outperforms all existing methods in complex ranking settings, thus it leads to substantial ranking improvements in cases where the display order is not known a priori

New opportunities for business communication: mobile advertising

Business communication in general, and advertising in particular, is in need of more targeted and effective approaches. This article introduces mobile advertising and its differential features, including the role of contextual advertising and customized relationship with mobile devices. It analyses future potential, identifying essential economic, technological and social forces that will shape mobile advertising in the short and middle term

AdWords, images, and banner blindness: an eye-tracking study

Unlike most online advertising, Google opts for a purely textual model in the ads showed in its results pages. This paper presents an eye-tracking study conducted to determine if right-side graphic elements in Google AdWords  affect users’ visual behavior. AdWords  have been modified to contain logos and pictures. The analysis concludes that the appearance of images does not change user interaction with ads, which is attributed to the “banner blindness” effect

A Systematic Review on Search Engine Advertising

The innovation of Search Engine Advertising (SEA) was first introduced in 1998. It soon became a very popular tool among practitioners for promoting their websites on the Web and turned into a billion dollar revenue source for search engines. In parallel with its rapid growth in use, SEA attracted the attention of academic researchers resulting in a large number of publications on the topic of SEA. However, no comprehensive review of this accumulated body of knowledge is currently available. This shortcoming has motivated us to conduct a systematic review of SEA literature. Herewith, we searched for and collected 101 papers on the topic of SEA, published in 72 journals from different disciplines and analyzed them to answer the research questions for this study. We have identified the historical development of SEA literature, predominant journals in the publication of SEA research, active reference disciplines as well as the main researchers in the field of SEA. Moreover, we have classified SEA literature into four categories and 10 research topics. We also uncovered a number of gaps in SEA literature and provided future research direction accordingly. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol7/iss3/2