Keyword Decisions in Sponsored Search Advertising: A Literature Review and Research Agenda
This is an incremental literature review that organizes existing knowledge for researchers and practitioners in sponsored search advertising.
This paper presents a comprehensive framework for keyword decisions in sponsored search advertising, organizing existing research into four decision levels and reviewing techniques, features, and metrics. It identifies gaps in the literature and proposes a research agenda for future work.
In sponsored search advertising (SSA), keywords serve as the basic unit of business model, linking three stakeholders: consumers, advertisers and search engines. This paper presents an overarching framework for keyword decisions that highlights the touchpoints in search advertising management, including four levels of keyword decisions, i.e., domain-specific keyword pool generation, keyword targeting, keyword assignment and grouping, and keyword adjustment. Using this framework, we review the state-of-the-art research literature on keyword decisions with respect to techniques, input features and evaluation metrics. Finally, we discuss evolving issues and identify potential gaps that exist in the literature and outline novel research perspectives for future exploration.