Internet Auctions and Traditional Media

What does it take to build an auction system in real life to sell ads? You have to know auction theory and be able to apply it of course. In addition, you make hundreds of decisions, some large, many small, that eventually become the system. A great example is a draft writeup on Noam's publications page that describes an auction-based system for selling ad slots on TV (traditional media!). At the heart of it is a simultaneous ascending price auction for combinatorial goods, but the angst of what to optimize and tradeoff is the crux and explained nicely in this paper.

ps: WINE09 website is up. Submission Deadline: July 20th, 2009. Notification: September 10th, 2009. Conference: December 14-18, 2009, at the Eternal City.