An Empirical Analysis of the Value of Information Sharing in the Market for Online Content

17 Pages Posted: 8 Apr 2014

See all articles by Howard Beales

Howard Beales

George Washington University - School of Business

Jeffrey A. Eisenach

NERA Economic Consulting; American Enterprise Institute

Date Written: January 2014

Abstract

This paper studies the importance of consumer-related information to the market for display advertising and, in turn, to the publishers who produce and distribute online content. Our study is based on two primary data sets. The first is a large, impression-level database of advertising placements during a one-week period in August 2013, provided by two anonymous companies that operate advertising exchanges with automated bidding. These data form the basis for an econometric analysis that allows us to measure the premium paid by advertisers for ads served to customers with cookies, and ultimately to assess the added economic value generated by information sharing in the online content market. The second data set, provided by Adomic, measures the relative prevalence of ads generated by different advertising models based on observations of display ad placements for the top 4000 publishers. This data set allows us to assess the relative significance of third party advertising technology models to the industry in general, and to smaller, “long-tail” web sites in particular.

Suggested Citation

Beales, Howard and Eisenach, Jeffrey A., An Empirical Analysis of the Value of Information Sharing in the Market for Online Content (January 2014). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2421405 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2421405

Howard Beales

George Washington University - School of Business ( email )

Washington, DC 20052
United States

Jeffrey A. Eisenach (Contact Author)

NERA Economic Consulting

1255 23rd Street, NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20037
United States
202-448-9029 (Phone)
202-466-3605 (Fax)

HOME PAGE: http://www.nera.com

American Enterprise Institute ( email )

1150 17th Street, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036
United States

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