Targeted advertising in digital media markets

22 February 2021 16:51

Targeted advertising in digital media markets

Digital platforms increasingly adopt advanced advertising technologies such as targeting. How does targeting impact competition and outcomes in two-sided markets?

The Centre for Business Economics is pleased to invite you to a seminar with Charlotte Bjørnhaug Evensen, Department of Economics, NHH.

The seminar will be held digitally on March 9, between 12:15 and 13:30.

Targeted advertising in digital media markets (joint with Atle Haugen, Department of Business and Management Science, NHH).

Abstract: Digital platforms increasingly adopt advanced advertising technologies such as targeting. In this paper, we analyze the impact of targeting on competition and outcomes in two-sided markets. We concentrate on platforms that are financed by both advertising fees and subscription fees, and let them adopt a targeting technology with increasing performance in audience size: a larger audience generates more consumer data, which improves the platforms' targeting ability and allows them to extract more ad revenues. Targeting therefore increases the importance of attracting consumers. This could result in fierce price competition if consumers subscribe to only one platform. As a consequence, the platforms might end up competing away the additional ad revenues on the consumer side of the market. The platforms could, however, be better off by serving some consumers who also subscribe to rival platforms. This would soften the price competition and enhance the prospect of profitable targeting. We show that the platforms always benefit from targeting if shared consumers are sufficiently valuable in the ad market.

CBE Seminar series

Throughout the Spring term, CBE invites to a number of seminars, including Joseph E. Harrington, Bernhard Ganglmair and Andreas Jørgensen Tveito.

Study the entire CBE seminar series.

The seminars will be held digitally.

If you are not a member of the CBE research group but would like to attend the seminar, please send an e-mail to the seminar organizers Mateusz Mysliwski (Mateusz.Mysliwski@nhh.no) or Øyvind Thommasen (Oyvind.Thomassen@nhh.no).