The (Marginal) Value of a Search Ad: An Online Causal Framework for Repeated Second-price Auctions

ArXi:2605.01756v1 Announce Type: cross Existing auto-bidding algorithms in digital advertising often treat the value of an ad opportunity as the revenue obtained when an ad is shown and/or clicked, and bid accordingly. This can lead to wasteful spending because the true value is the marginal gain from paid exposure: even without winning a sponsored slot, an advertiser may still earn revenue via an organic search result (e.g., on Google or Amazon