Gabriel Lang

Date of Award

2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Coe, Richard

Keywords

Economics, Advertising, Digital Technology

Area of Concentration

Economics

Abstract

Consumer data is an increasingly relevant factor in the delivery of digital advertising. Advertising allows the provision of services such as search, email, social network, and online retail to consumers at zero monetary cost. These services are provided in advertising-supported multisided markets. The intersection of zero prices to end users, multisided markets, and the economics of information technology complicate understanding competition and render many traditional tools of economic analysis limited or inapplicable. Thus any application of antitrust or competition policy is severely constrained. To remedy this deficit, this analysis focuses on the competitive effects of consumer data. The effects suggest that data-driven advertising further supports market power of dominant firms and failure to recognize a consumer data as a dimension of competition results in an incomplete understanding of the market. As data-driven advertising continues to increase relative to other forms, it becomes an increasingly important consideration for competition policy and antitrust analysis.

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