Sequential item pricing for unlimited supply

We investigate the extent to which price updates can increase the revenue of a seller with little prior information on demand. We study prior-free revenue maximization for a seller with unlimited supply of n item types facing m myopic buyers present for k < log n days. For the static (k = 1) case, Balcan et al. [2] show that one random item price (the same on each item) yields revenue within a \Theta(log m + log n) factor of optimum and this factor is tight. We define the hereditary maximizers property of buyer valuations (satisfied by any multi-unit or gross substitutes valuation) that is sufficient for a significant improvement of the approximation factor in the dynamic (k > 1) setting. Our main result is a non-increasing, randomized, schedule of k equal item prices with expected revenue within a O((log m + log n) / k) factor of optimum for private valuations with hereditary maximizers. This factor is almost tight: we show that any pricing scheme over k days has a revenue approximation factor of at least (log m + log n) / (3k). We obtain analogous matching lower and upper bounds of \Theta((log n) / k) if all valuations have the same maximum. We expect our upper bound technique to be of broader interest; for example, it can significantly improve the result of Akhlaghpour et al. [1]. We also initiate the study of revenue maximization given allocative externalities (i.e. influences) between buyers with combinatorial valuations. We provide a rather general model of positive influence of others' ownership of items on a buyer's valuation. For affine, submodular externalities and valuations with hereditary maximizers we present an influence-and-exploit (Hartline et al. [13]) marketing strategy based on our algorithm for private valuations. This strategy preserves our approximation factor, despite an affine increase (due to externalities) in the optimum revenue.Comment: 18 pages, 1 figur

Vers une utilisation de la diversité de chemins dans l'internet

In this thesis we consider a new service where carriers offer additional routes to their customers (w.r.t. to the BGP default route) as a free or value-added service. These alternate routes can be used by customers to optimize their communications, by bypassing some congested points in the Internet (e.g. a “tussled” peeringpoints), to help them to meet their traffic engineering objectives (better delays etc.) or just for robustness purposes (e.g, shift to a disjoint alternate route if needed). First we propose a simple architecture that allows a network service provider to benefit from the diversity it currently receives. Then we extend this architecture in order to make the propagation of the Internet path diversity possible, not only to direct neighbors but also to their neighbors and so on. We take advantage of this advance to relax the route selection processes of autonomous systems in order to make them be able to set up new routing paradigms. Nevertheless announcing additional paths can lead to scalability issues, so each carrier could receive more paths than what it could manage. We quantify this issue and we underline easy adaptations and small path filterings which make the number of paths drop to a manageable amount. Last but not least we set up an auction-type route allocation framework, which gives to network service providers the opportunities first to propagate to their neighbors only the paths the said neighbors are interested in and second to leverage a new routing selection paradigm based on commercial agreements and negotiationsNous considérons, dans cette thèse, un nouveau service par lequel les opérateurs de télécommunications offrent des routes supplémentaires à leurs clients (en plus de la route par défaut) comme un service gratuit ou à valeur ajoutée. Ces routes supplémentaires peuvent être utilisées par des clients afin d’optimiser leurs communications, en outrepassant des points de congestion d’Internet, ou les aider à atteindre leurs objectifs d’ingénierie de trafic (meilleurs délais etc.) ou dans un but de robustesse. Nous proposons d’abord une architecture simple permettant à un opérateur de télécommunication de bénéficier de la diversité de chemin qu’il reçoit déjà. Nous étendons ensuite cette architecture afin de rendre possible la propagation de cette diversité de chemin, non seulement aux voisins directs mais aussi, de proche en proche, aux autres domaines. Nous profitons de cette occasion pour relaxer la sélection des routes des différents domaines afin de leur permettre de mettre en place de nouveaux paradigmes de routage. Néanmoins, annoncer des chemins additionnels peut entrainer des problèmes de passage à l’échelle car chaque opérateur peut potentiellement recevoir plus de chemins que ce qu’il peut gérer. Nous quantifions ce problème et mettons en avant des modifications et filtrages simples permettant de réduire ce nombre à un niveau acceptable. En dernier, nous proposons un processus, inspiré des ventes aux enchères, permettant aux opérateurs de propager aux domaines voisins seulement les chemins qui intéressent les dits voisins. De plus, ce processus permet de mettre en avant un nouveau paradigme de propagation de routes, basé sur des négociations et accords commerciau