Sponsored Question Answering

The potential move from search to question answering (QA) ignited the question of how should the move from sponsored search to sponsored QA look like. We present the first formal analysis of a sponsored QA platform. The platform fuses an organic answer to a question with an ad to produce a so called sponsored answer. Advertisers then bid on their sponsored answers. Inspired by Generalized Second Price Auctions (GSPs), the QA platform selects the winning advertiser, sets the payment she pays, and shows the user the sponsored answer. We prove an array of results. For example, advertisers are incentivized to be truthful in their bids; i.e., set them to their true value of the sponsored answer. The resultant setting is stable with properties of VCG auctions.