A Truthful Pricing Mechanism For Sponsored Content In Wireless Networks

We study the problem faced by a wireless service provider (SP) when offering a "sponsored content" service to multiple content providers (CPs). Each CP specifies the value that it would obtain from additional content views together with estimates on the underlying demand for its content. The SP then determines which CPs should sponsor their content along with the price for doing so.This basic framework has been studied in a variety of different contexts in recent years. However, previous work typically assumes that the CP parameters are reported truthfully to the SP. Another common assumption is that each CP has an independent traffic stream, i.e. there is no notion of competition between CPs in similar markets.In this work we address both of these issues. We present a pricing scheme that optimizes SP profit subject to CPs being incentivized to reveal their valuation and number of potential views in a truthful manner. We also examine how the model is affected if CPs in the same market are vying to sponsor a common pool of content. ocr