Has there been any work done from an information-theoretic perspective on the effect of sponsored information added to a page of search results? There's gotta be an academic paper on this somewhere...
I'm particularly interested in the implicit information conveyed by the mere position of a search result on the page, and how that compares to the implicit information contained by the presence of sponsored content. I would think that sponsored content would on average contain maybe half the amount of information as an organic result, since the presence of the ad is partially a function of its relevance but also a function of the amount paid for its placement, whereas organic result position is a purely a function of relevance.
Then again, perhaps the amount paid could also be considered an implicit source of information on the content being offered, but that seems less reliable.
I'm particularly interested in the implicit information conveyed by the mere position of a search result on the page, and how that compares to the implicit information contained by the presence of sponsored content. I would think that sponsored content would on average contain maybe half the amount of information as an organic result, since the presence of the ad is partially a function of its relevance but also a function of the amount paid for its placement, whereas organic result position is a purely a function of relevance.
Then again, perhaps the amount paid could also be considered an implicit source of information on the content being offered, but that seems less reliable.