Strategic Interaction Among Content Providers in Sponsored Content Markets

The data-sponsored scheme allows the content provider to cover parts of the network subscription fees for end-users. As sponsored data gains traction in the industry, it is important to understand its implications. This work considers content providers (CP) choice of how much content to sponsor and the implications for end-users and CPs. In particular, the authors model the interactions of CPs as a non-cooperative game in terms of pricing, the credibility of content, and the amount of sponsored content. Additionally, they have proved through a detailed analysis of the existence and uniqueness of the Nash equilibrium. Based on the game properties, they implement a learning scheme using best-response dynamics that allows CPs to learn their strategies in a fast, accurate, yet completely distributed fashion. Extensive simulations provide attractive insights on how the sponsoring content may increase the CPs payoff.