Research

How does integration between a dominant search engine and a publisher affect a search engine’s incentives to bias towards its own content? In addition, how does integration affect the quantity of ads on an integrated publisher’s site? In this paper, the authors develop a theoretical model to demonstrate the effects of no integration, partial integration, and full integration on search engine bias and quantity of publisher ads. The model also sheds lights on user and advertiser welfare after integration.

A revolutionary approach to data ownership and privacy, Solid is a tech stack developed by the founder of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee. Solid’s mission is to decentralize the web by doing away with huge data silos, providing users ownership over their personal data, and reshaping the nature of competition among digital companies.

This paper explores the relationship between two ubiquitous phenomena in the digital economy: online ad auctions and tracking cookies. The authors assess what happens to ad auction revenue when competing advertisers receive different kinds of information from their cookies. They find that the revenue to ad sellers like Google and Facebook changes dramatically based on ad auction structure and on the quantity and quality of information available to advertisers.