Internet Intermediaries' Editorial Content Quality

Information intermediaries deliver information about a supplier's product. They are paid by those same suppliers they certify. This introduces conflicts of interests as the intermediaries want to retain customers by delivering truthful information about suppliers, while suppliers would want the intermediary to provide them with more customers than their quality would otherwise entitle them to. The paper compares two options for information intermediaries: either propose a menu of contracts to the suppliers so that they reveal their type, or find out by themselves the type of the supplier. In the first case, a rent must be left to induce type revelation, in the other, the intermediary must incur a cost to determine the type of the supplier. The paper shows that competition leads to a more frequent use of direct revelation mechanisms at the expense of independent research by the intermediary. The paper contributes to the literature on certification intermediaries in two sided markets by introducing a choice between relying on soft information or acquiring hard information about the side of the market to be certified, and by studying the influence of competition on contract choices in such an extended setting.Search engines, two-sided markets, information services, CPM, click-through, internet, intermediation, intermediaries.

Effects of reputation and aesthetics on the credibility of search engine results

Search engines are the primary gatekeepers of online information, but are judged differently than traditional gatekeepers due to the interactive and impersonal nature of the online search process. The researcher distributed an online survey with 141 respondents and conducted 22 observational interviews. Information credibility was tested through measures of expertise, goodwill, and trustworthiness, which were each correlated with perceived reputation and perceived aesthetics. Search engine reputation was found to have moderate correlations with expertise and trustworthiness, and a lesser, but still moderate correlation with goodwill. Aesthetics was related to the credibility measures in similar but lesser proportions. Interviews indicated search habits such as wariness towards commercial interests and the high impact of search intent on the rigor of credibility judgments

Electronic marketplaces and their roles in the staffing industry : an explorative analysis

This thesis will explore and analyze the role of electronic marketplaces in the staffing industry from the viewpoint of hiring executives, human resources personnel, staffing organizations, and candidates. Using analyses of popular electronic job marketplaces, this paper will establish the efficiency and effectiveness of electronic marketplaces as compared to traditional staffing methods. It will also provide a detailed view of various electronic marketplaces, their financial structure and analysis of their performance. This information will also result in a return on investment estimate for the average hiring organization using electronic marketplaces

Screen real estate ownership based mechanism for negotiating advertisement display

As popularity of online video grows, a number of models of advertising are emerging. It is typically the brokers – usually the operators of websites – who maintain the balance between content and advertising. Existing approaches focus primarily on personalizing advertisements for viewer segments, with minimal decision-making capacity for individual viewers. We take a resource ownership view on this problem. We view consumers’ attention space, which can be abstracted as a display screen for an engaged viewer, as precious resource owned by the viewer. Viewers pay for the content they wish to view in dollars, as well as in terms of their attention. Specifically, advertisers may make partial payment for a viewer’s content, in return for receiving the viewer’s attention to their advertising. Our approach, named “FlexAdSense”, is based on CyberOrgs model, which encapsulates distributed owned resources for multi-agent computations. We build a market of viewers’ attention space in which advertisers can trade, just as viewers can trade in a market of content. We have developed key mechanisms to give viewers flexible control over the display of advertisements in real time. Specific policies needed for automated negotiations can be plugged-in. This approach relaxes the exclusivity of the relationship between advertisers and brokers, and empowers viewers, enhancing their viewing experience. This thesis presents the rationale, design, implementation, and evaluation of FlexAdSense. Feature comparison with existing advertising mechanisms shows how FlexAdSense enables viewers to control with fine-grained flexibility. Experimental results demonstrate the scalability of the approach, as the number of viewers increases. A preliminary analysis of user overhead illustrates minimal attention overhead for viewers as they customize their policies

Internetinio marketingo komunikacijos sistema

Informacinių komunikacinių technologijų plėtra ir pokyčiai skirtingose visuomenės grupėse, taip pat didelė esamų ir būsimų komunikacijos priemonių gausa išugdė internetinio marketingo komunikacijos priemonių kompleksinio efektyvumo vertinimo poreikį. Disertacijoje nagrinėjama internetinio marketingo komunikacijos priemonių parinkimo problematika, atsižvelgiant į elektroninio vartotojo gyvavimo ciklo etapus ir skirtingų kartų vartotojų preferencijas. Šių objektų, kaip internetinio marketingo komunikacijos sistemos, kompleksinis pažinimas sudaro prielaidas šiuolaikinio internetinio marketingo teorijos plėtotei. Disertacijos tikslas – sukurti inovatyvią internetinio marketingo komunikacijos sistemą, suteikiančią galimybę gerinti marketingo komunikacijos procesą per skirtingų vartotojų kartų internetinio marketingo komunikacijos priemonių preferencijas įvairiuose elektroninio vartotojo gyvavimo ciklo etapuose dinaminės technologinės aplinkos sąlygomis. Be to, disertacijoje siekiama ištirti skirtingo amžiaus vartotojų charakteristikas, turinčias lemiamos įtakos jiems įsitraukiant į virtualios erdvės veiklas, ir pateikti šių vartotojų apibūdinimą pagal demografinius ir psichografinius požymius. Pirmame skyriuje analizuojami tradicinio marketingo pokyčiai, susiję su informacijos amžiaus keliamais iššūkiais bei atsirandančiais naujais poreikiais, nustatomos prioritetinės internetinio marketingo tyrimų kryptys, internetinio marketingo komunikacijos priemonės ir jų charakteristikos, atliekama elektroninių vartotojų gyvavimo ciklų teorijos analizė, išskiriamos vartotojų elgsenos elektroninėje erdvėje kokybinės charakteristikos. Antrame skyriuje pateikiama suformuota empirinių tyrimų metodika, skirta vartotojų elgsenai virtualioje erdvėje tirti. Taikomi metodai: apklausa, eksperimentas (akių judesio sekimo technologijos) bei statistinė analizė. Remiantis atlikto empirinio tyrimo rezultatais nustatytos skirtingo amžiaus vartotojų internetinio marketingo komunikacijos priemonių preferencijos tam tikruose elektroninio vartotojo gyvavimo ciklo etapuose. Trečiame skyriuje pateikiami pagal empirinių tyrimų rezultatų analizę parengti skirtingų kartų vartotojų internetinio marketingo komunikacijos priemonių preferencijų žemėlapiai. Jų visuma sudaro internetinio marketingo komunikacijos sistemą, skirtą įmonių marketingo komunikacijos procesui gerinti, parenkant internetinio marketingo komunikacijos priemones. Apibrėžiami internetinio marketingo komunikacijos sistemos požymiai, įvertinamas jos pritaikomumas bei ribotumai ir nustatomos tolesnių mokslinių tyrimų kryptys

Suchen, finden – glauben?

Dreimal täglich googeln: In Deutschland recherchieren mehr als achtzig Prozent der Internetnutzer regelmäßig in Suchmaschinen oder Webkatalogen – unabhängig von Alter, Geschlecht und Bildung. Das Internet etabliert sich für weite Kreise der Bevölkerung zum Recherchemedium Nummer eins. Private Blogs, Foren, Wikis und Newsportale – die Glaubwürdigkeit der Informationen im Web variiert erheblich. Suchmaschinen spiegeln diese Heterogenität wider. Andreas Tremel beschäftigt sich mit der Frage, wie die Nutzer mit unterschiedlich glaubwürdigen Fundstücken in Suchmaschinen umgehen. Befragt man Nutzer zur Bedeutung der Glaubwürdigkeit von Informationen im Web, ist diese offenbar das Selektionskriterium. Dennoch scheinen Nutzer naiv, wenig aufgeklärt und oberflächlich im Umgang mit Suchergebnissen. Um das tatsächliche Verhalten abhängig von der Treffer-Glaubwürdigkeit erstmalig beobachten zu können, wurde eine Suchmaschinensimulation entwickelt, die eine experimentelle Manipulation im Rahmen einer Feldstudie (n=400) ermöglichte. Vor dem Hintergrund der Glaubwürdigkeit wurden auch die Nutzung von Keyword-Werbung und Einflüsse des Recherche-Involvements untersucht.Googling three times a day: 80 % of Internet users in Germany use search engines and web directories regularly – regardless of age, sex or education. The Internet is quickly establishing itself as the No. 1 research tool for big parts of the population. Private Blogs, forums, Wikis and news portals – the credibility of information on the web varies greatly. Search engines reflect this heterogeneity. Andreas Tremel looks into the way users handle the varying credibility of results from search engines. Asked about the importance of credibility of information on the web, users name it the decisive factor. Nevertheless, they seem naïve, misinformed and superficial in handling search results. To be able to evaluate actual behavior relating to the credibility of search results, a search engine simulation was developed which allowed for experimental manipulation within the course of a field study (n=400). Additionally, the use of keyword advertising and the influence of research involvement was analyzed within the context of credibility