A Revenue Sharing Mechanism for Federated Search and Advertising

Federated search engines combine search results from two or more (general--purpose or domain--specific) content providers. They enable complex searches (e.g., complete vacation planning) or more reliable results by allowing users to receive high quality results from a variety of sources. We propose a new revenue sharing mechanism for federated search engines, considering different actors involved in the search results generation (i.e., content providers, advertising providers, hybrid content+advertising providers, and content integrators). We extend the existing sponsored search auctions by supporting heterogeneous participants and redistribution of monetary values to the different actors, while maintaining flexibility in the payment scheme.