In recent years, Optimized Cost Per Click (OCPC) and Optimized Cost Per Mille (OCPM) have emerged as the most widely adopted pricing models in the online advertising industry. However, the existing literature has yet to identify the specific conditions under which these models outperform traditional pricing models like Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per Action (CPA). To fill the gap, this paper builds an economic model that compares OCPC with CPC and CPA theoretically, which incorporates out-site scenarios and outside options as two key factors. Our analysis reveals that OCPC can effectively replace CPA by tackling the problem of advertisers strategically manipulating conversion reporting in out-site scenarios where conversions occur outside the advertising platform. Furthermore, OCPC exhibits the potential to surpass CPC in platform payoffs by providing higher advertiser payoffs and consequently attracting more advertisers. However, if advertisers have less competitive outside options and consistently stay in the focal platform, the platform may achieve higher payoffs using CPC. Our findings deliver valuable insights for online advertising platforms in selecting optimal pricing models, and provide recommendations for further enhancing their payoffs. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to analyze OCPC from an economic perspective. Moreover, our analysis can be applied to the OCPM model as well.

翻译：近年来，优化每次点击成本（OCPC）与优化每千次展示成本（OCPM）已成为在线广告行业应用最广泛的定价模式。然而，现有文献尚未明确界定这些模式在何种具体条件下优于传统定价模式（如每次点击成本（CPC）和每次行动成本（CPA））。为填补这一空白，本文构建了一个经济模型，将站外场景与外部选择作为两个关键因素，从理论上比较了OCPC与CPC及CPA模式。分析表明，在转化行为发生于广告平台之外的站外场景中，OCPC能通过解决广告主策略性操纵转化报告的问题，有效替代CPA模式。此外，OCPC通过提供更高的广告主收益从而吸引更多广告主，展现出在平台收益方面超越CPC的潜力。然而，若广告主的外部选择竞争力较弱且持续聚焦于特定平台，则采用CPC模式可能使平台获得更高收益。本研究为在线广告平台选择最优定价模式提供了重要见解，并为提升其收益提出了改进建议。据我们所知，这是首个从经济学视角分析OCPC的研究。此外，本分析框架同样适用于OCPM模式。