Papers for

ecommerce marketplace operators

Papers whose findings have a practical use for this group, as judged from the abstract. Open a paper to read what it means in practice.

Platforms use common fees to price search information effectively

Pricing Information in Search with Nonobligatory Inspection

Abstract: As AI agents reshape Web search and advertising, platforms can monetize information that improves decisions. We study information pricing for sequential search among independent alternatives with nonobligatory inspection: the buyer may select any alternative without buying its report. We show that a common fee maximizes static revenue for identical priors, resolving a uniform-pricing conjecture. Our results also establish that exact optimization is NP-hard for heterogeneous binary priors. Despite this hardness, our polynomial-time static pricing algorithm achieves a $3$-approximation to the information surplus. More generally, a common static fee approximates optimal adaptive revenue within a logarithmic factor in the number of alternatives. This guarantee is asymptotically tight.

Sun 25 OctComputer Science and Game Theory
The gist
When people search for options online, like shopping or ads, they often want extra information before choosing. This paper looks at how platforms can charge for giving that information when buyers can look but don’t have to pay to see details for all choices. The authors find that charging the same fee for all options works best in many cases, even though figuring out the perfect fees is sometimes very hard. Their method also gives a good approximation to the best possible pricing, making it practical.
Open → 2610.34369v1