Cost-Per-Action 광고 방법을 이용한 Conversion Action Data 메커니즘의 평가 Evaluation of Conversion Action Data Mechanisms in Cost-Per-Action Advertising 이 첨 (Li Tian) 경희대학교 경영대학 & 경영연구원 이 경 전 (Kyoung Jun Lee) 경희대학교 경영대학 부교수, 교신저자 요 약 온라인 광고모델의 기본 모델이 CPM (cost-per-mille) 기반 모델에서 CPC (cost-per-click) 기반 모델로 변화해왔으며, CPA (cost-per-action)모델이 온라인 광고산업의 새로운 대안 모델로 제시되고 있다. CPA 모델에서는 사용자가 어떤 광고를 클릭했는 지에 관한 정보를 퍼블리셔(Publisher)가 보유할 수 있어야 하며, 그래서, CPA 모델의 핵심은 Conversation Action Data를 확보하는 것이다. 이 논문에서는 이를 획득하는 두 가지 기존 메커니즘을 소개하고, 이들의 특징을 비교하고, 각 메커니즘의 한계를 분석한 다. 그 다음에 두 가지 새로운 메커니즘을 설계하고, 작동 요건을 분석하고, 실용성을 평가한다. 마지막 으로, 기존의 메커니즘들과 새로운 메커니즘들의 특징을 비교하고, 각 메커니즘의 비즈니스 가치와 유용성, 응용 범위를 분석한다. 이 논문에서 제안된 2가지의 새로운 메커니즘과 기존 메커니즘과 비교 분석을 통해 퍼블리셔에게 최적 CPA 메커니즘에 관한 판단정보를 제공할 수 있을 것으로 판단된다. 키워드 : 온라인 광고, CPA(Cost Per Action), Conversion Action Data, 비즈니스 모델 Ⅰ. 서 론1) several problems. In CPC, advertisers pay by the click-through rate. However, in many situations, a Online advertising is one of the fastest growing user may just click an advertisement but does not segments in the marketing industry. One of the domi- buy items. Good click-through rates are not the in- nant business models in online advertising market is dication of good conversion rates. Another problem CPC(cost-per-click). But CPC business model has is Click Fraud which is considered by many experts as the biggest challenge facing by the online advertis- ing industry(Crawford, 2004; Penenberg, 2004; Stone, †This research is supported by the Ubiquitous Autonomic Computing and Network Project, the Ministry of 2005). Click Fraud is hard to solve, because in CPC Information and Communication (MIC) 21st Century business model, publishers do not know what will Frontier R&D Program in Korea. happen after a visitor clicks an advertisement (Tuzhi- 2008. 8. 123 이 첨․이 경 전 lin, A., 2006). analyze entities’ potential benefits and source of rev- A natural solution for the problem of Click Fraud enues based on Timmers’ business model defi- is to charge advertisers according to cost-per-ac- nition(Timmers, 1998). Section 6 will compare the tion(CPA) (Nazerzadeh et al., 2007). CPA means ad- existing and new models, summarize each model’s vertisers only pay after pre-setup-actions, such as element, value, Application Area and limitation, and downloading software, registering for a newsletter, a discuss the limitation and future works. purchase. In CPA, publishers get the advertisement fee only after a user takes a specific action(e.g. a Ⅱ. Related Works purchase). Therefore, the key in CPA model for pub- lishers is to get the information about what happens 2.1 Conversion Tracking Software-based after a user clicks an advertisement. Tuzhilin called Mechanism the information about whether or not the user visited certain designated pages to do some pre-setup-actions In this mechanism, a publisher invents software to as Conversion Action Data(Tuzhilin, A., 2006). track users’ Conversion Action Data(e.g. cookie). Ad- There are mainly two existing methods to get the vertisers set up this software in their websites and CAD: 1) Advertisers collect users’ CAD and report this software automatically monitors the users’ ac- the data to publishers(see Section 2.1). 2) Publishers tions that take place in advertisers’ websites and re- set up software(which is used to track users’ con- ports the CAD to the publisher. Google is testing its version action data) in advertisers’ websites and mon- pay-per-action in this way(services.google.com/pay- itor users’ action data via the software(see Section peraction). The process <Figure 1>, value, application 2.2). But these methods face challenges: 1) Adverti- areas, and the limitation are summarized as below. sers may not voluntarily provide the CAD or misre- port the data to the publisher for some economic or ④ private reasons(Mahdian and Tomak, 2007). 2) ⑩ ⑧ ③ Advertisers may find a way to manipulate the soft- ① Advertiser ware if they find it sufficiently profitable(Nazerzadeh ⑥ et al., 2007). Publisher ② Therefore, this paper proposes two mechanisms to ⑦-1 ⑦-2 help publishers get CAD: 1) Publishers get the con- ⑤ version action data from users(see Section 3.1). 2) User Publishers take part in pre-setup-action to collect ⑨ CAD(see Section 3.2). Section 2 will introduce two existing models, com- <Figure 1> Process of Conversion Tracking pare their characteristics and analyze their limitations. Software-based Mechanism Section 3 will suggest two new models. Section 4 will analyze the requirements of the new models. ① A publisher invents software to track users’ Section 5 will use assumptions-based assessment CAD. (Shin, 2006) to evaluate new models’ feasibility and ② An advertiser defines an action and creates ad- 124 Information Systems Review, Vol.10, No.2 Cost-Per-Action 광고 방법을 이용한 Conversion Action Data 메커니즘의 평가 vertisement in the publisher’s website with b: It can not work when advertisers consider CPA model. the CAD as confidential information and do ③ The publisher provides the software to the not want to share. advertiser. c: Advertisers will find a way to manipulate the ④ The advertiser installs the software in her/his software if they find it sufficiently profitable. website. ⑤ A user searches information in the publisher’s 2.2 Mahdian and Tomak’s Mechanism website. ⑥ The pub lisher exposes the advertiser’s adverti- In this mechanism, advertisers collect users’ CAD sement and link URL. and report the data to publishers. It means that a pub- ⑦-1 The user clicks the ad but does not do lisher gets the data from advertisers’ reports. In CPA pre-setup-action. model, an advertiser charges a fixed amount per ac- ⑦-2 The user clicks this ad and does pre-set- tion, she or he might benefit from not reporting some up-action. of the actions. To prevent misreporting situation, this mechanism uses click-fraud-resistant learning algo- ⑧ The software automatically monitors user’s rithms(Immorlica et al., 2005) and rank-by-revenue CAD. system(Mahdian and Tomak, 2007). An advertiser ⑨ The software reports user’s CAD to the can not gain any significant amount by misreporting publisher. the actions. ⑩ The advertiser pays the advertisement fee when This system can be used to prevent those adver- Conversion Action has occurred. tisers who have the capability to gather true CAD but probable to misreport the data because of eco- • Value: Conversion Tracking Software-based nomic reasons or privacy. The aim of this mechanism Mechanism helps the small and medium adver- is to get truthful action data from advertisers. A de- tisers to gather CAD. It also can prevent the tailed step toward this goal was taken in the paper misreporting, because publisher can use the of Mahdian and Tomak(2007), here we just use its software to directly monitor the user’s con- result: version action. • Application Area: Pm = min (bm, p) and pa = (p-pm/AR) a. It can be used by the advertisers who are not capable to collect CAD. The value of p is the bid of the next advertiser b. It can be used by the publishers who want or the reserved price, pm means the charge for every to prevent advertisers misreporting the data. impression, bm is the bid per impression, pa means • Limitation: the charge for an action and AR is the current esti- a: Publishers need to get permission from adver- mate of the action rate. The process <Figure 2>, val- tisers for installing software in advertisers’ ue, application areas, and the limitation are summar- websites. ized as below. 2008. 8. 125 이 첨․이 경 전 advertisers who have the capability to gather ⑦ the true CAD but probable to misreport the data ⑥ ⑤ Advertiser Publisher ③ because of economic reasons. ① • Limitation: It is based on the condition that ④-1 ④-2 advertisers have the capability to collect the ② Conversion Action Data. Therefore, User a: It is difficult to adopt for many small and ⑧ medium advertisers who do not have the ca- pability to collect the CAD. <Figure 2> Process of Mahdian and b: Also difficult to adopt for some big adver- Tomak’s Mechanism tisers who consider the conversion data as confidential information. ① An advertiser defines an action and creates ad- vertisement in a publisher’s website with CPA model. Ⅲ. Suggestion of New Models ② A user searches information in the publisher’s website. 3.1 SSO-based Mechanism ③ The publisher exposes the advertiser’s adver- In this mechanism, a publisher does not get CAD tisement and link URL. from advertisers but from users. Users submit the ac- ④-1 The user clicks the ad but does not do tion data to the publisher. The key of this mechanism pre-setup-action. is to let users submit the true CAD. ④-2 The user clicks this ad and does pre-set- up-action. The architecture is designed as below: using SSO ⑤ The advertiser collects users’ CAD. (single-sign-on) method to link advertiser’s website ⑥ The publisher uses Mahdian and Tomak’s and publisher’s website together. Before a user does Theorem to price the action. pre-setup-action in advertiser’s website, she/he needs ⑦ The advertiser reports the data to the publi- to open an account in publisher’s website. This ac- sher. count information(ID and PW) will be used to sign ⑧ The advertiser pays the advertisement fee when in advertisers’ websites. After the user does pre-set- Conversion Action has occurred. up-action in an advertiser’s website, the page(in ad- vertiser’s website) is automatically redirected to Con- • Value: In this system, an advertiser can not version Conformation Request Page(in publisher’s gain more than 0 per impression by misreport- website).