Call for Papers for a Special Issue of
Journal of Electronic Commerce Research on
ONLINE ADVERTISING AND SPONSORED SEARCH
GUEST EDITOR
Kerem Tomak, Principal Research Scientist, Search and Marketplace Design,
Yahoo.com, Kerem@yahoo-inc.com
OVERVIEW
According to a recent emarketer report, the number of US search engine
users in 2006 grew to 144.5 million and expected to increase to 166.2
million by 2010. This corresponds to a search engine user base of 50.5% of
the US population. Advertisers of all sizes see the opportunity in reaching
to this mass of consumers. They spent close to $10 billion in 2005 and
expected to spend double this amount in 2006.
Such monetization of search also attracts fraud. In recent lawsuits against
Google and Yahoo, advertisers aim to be guarded against fraudulent click
activity which leads to artificially inflated ad rates. Businesses around
the world can decrease rivals' margins and exhaust their advertising
budgets by repeatedly clicking on pay-per-click ads. Some estimates
indicate that more than 15% of clicks are fake. One way of detecting
click fraud is via data mining tools and techniques. Another way is by
changing pricing mechanisms and the way revenue is shared through user
activity on web sites.
Online advertising market is expanding at a warp speed yet, research on
search marketing as well as online advertising in general remains in its
infancy. There is a need for comprehensive research studies on, for
example, detecting click fraud, new pricing mechanisms to increase
incentives to participate in online ad markets, increasing search relevance
among many others. Another related and topical issue is how to design
