Shared Winner Determination in Sponsored Search Auctions

Sponsored search auctions form a multibillion dollar industry. Search providers auction advertisement slots on search result pages to advertisers who are charged only if the end-user clicks on the advertiser's ad. The high volume of searches presents an opportunity for sharing the work required to resolve multiple auctions that occur simultaneously. We provide techniques for efficiently resolving sponsored search auctions involving large numbers of advertisers, with a focus on two issues: sharing work between multiple search auctions using shared aggregation and shared sort, and dealing with budget uncertainty arising from ads that have been displayed from previous auctions but have not received clicks yet.