Brief Announcement: Timing Games and Shared Memory

Abstract. We model a simple problem in advertising as a strategic timing game, and consider continuous and discrete versions of this game. For the continuous game, we completely characterize the Nash equilibrium for two players. For the discrete game, we give an efficient algorithm to compute the Nash equilibrium for n players. We consider a model with a single shared register, a stream of readers arriving at a constant rate in the interval [0, 1], and a set of writers that each write to the register one time. We interpret the value of the register as an advertisement, the readers as customers, and thewritersasadvertisers. The register represents any public space such as an ad on a web page or an entry in a system directory. The register’s value might be a link to a web site or a pointer to some service, resource, or product. Since the advertiser’s goal is to maximize the number of customers seeing its ad, and since the customers arrive at a constant rate, this is equivalent to maximizing the length of time the ad is in the register before it is overwritten by another ad. Since each advertiser can write its ad to the registe