Google Quality Score
In optimizing their revenue from advertising, Google is incentivized to have the best ads on their site so that they can get the most money for each ad slot–a higher click through rate on an ad will yield greater profits. If an ad is bad, they’ll charge more for it to make up for the […]
Understanding Information Cascades and Misinformation
https://apnews.com/article/the-facebook-papers-covid-vaccine-misinformation-c8bbc569be7cc2ca583dadb4236a0613 The process of information cascades is similar to how misinformation spreads on the internet. As a formal definition, information cascades are when people conform to what everybody else is doing, even when they privately don’t align. This “following of the crowd” often happens in large groups, however can be easily stopped if someone steps […]
Original Definition of Facebook’s Unique VCG Auction Process
https://www.wired.com/2015/09/facebook-doesnt-make-much-money-couldon-purpose/ Recently in class we have been learning about the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves (VCG) Auction, a procedure adopted by many tech firms to match advertisers with ads slots. Based on the Second-Price Auction model, VCG interprets the slot price charged to an advertiser as the HARM that this advertiser did to other bidders by taking the […]
Braess’s Paradox at Work in Covid-19 Locked Down India
When one thinks of Braess’s paradox, the word that comes to mind is usually something like “roads” or “traffic.” Yet, Braess’s paradox is not limited to just roads and cars. One such alternate application can be seen during the widespread shutdowns that occurred during the recent coronavirus pandemic. In his article titled “India Comes Together […]
Ads and Discrimination
Recently in one of my classes I came across this very interesting article about Discrimination in Online Ad Delivery by Latanya Sweeney. Her article described how when searching for more Black-sounding names, arrest records appear more often across multiple ad companies in Google. Considering how we have been learning about sponsored search, and how we […]
How Trading Networks Explain the Corruption Among Landlords
Landlords exploit those who live in poverty for their own benefit. In a sample of neighborhoods, it is found that poor communities, especially ethnic ones, have the highest rate of housing exploitation. Despite the poor conditions of these homes, the price paid exceeds what it is valued at. In neighborhoods where 50-60 percent of the […]
Movies & Review Sites: Link-based Ranking
I’ve been watching more movies than usual this semester, and many of them have cultural backgrounds that I’m not familiar with or underlying themes and messages that require some analysis. That’s why I like to search up reviews and analyses online after watching them. Last week while googling reviews on the film The Grandmaster, I […]
Desire Paths & Triadic Closure
Recently I was reading about a concept called desire paths, defined by Wikipedia as a “path created as a consequence of erosion caused by human or animal foot traffic.” Essentially, these unpaved paths between already paved ones reflect an optimization arising from individual choices, and it reminded me greatly of the concept of triadic closure. […]
A New Mechanism for Social Network Auctions Developed from Flaws of VCG Procedure
The reference academic paper written by researchers at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China and ShanghaiTech University can be found here. This paper discusses the fallbacks that the VCG procedure can have when allocating matchings and prices to participants in a single item auction generalized as a social network, which is a […]
Forbes: 2021 Google Algorithm Update
The reference article by David Hunter can be accessed here. As we discussed in class, Google has iterated extensively on its original web-searching algorithm since it was PageRank, a graduate project at Stanford. The industry is enormous, and Google pulls in hundreds of billions per year on its free search service, mainly from advertising. Ads […]