Related papers: The Economic Value of User Tracking for Publishers
In recent years, European regulators have debated restricting the time an online tracker can track a user to protect consumer privacy better. Despite the significance of these debates, there has been a noticeable absence of any…
Prestigious news publishers, and more recently, Meta, have begun to request that users pay for privacy. Specifically, users receive a notification banner, referred to as a pay-or-tracking wall, that requires them to (i) pay money to avoid…
Browsing privacy solutions face an uphill battle to deployment. Many operate counter to the economic objectives of popular online services (e.g., by completely blocking ads) and do not provide enough incentive for users who may be subject…
This study explores the impact of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), introduced on May 25th, 2018, on online trackers, vital elements in the online advertising ecosystem. Using a difference-in-differences approach with a…
Free content and services on the Web are often supported by ads. However, with the proliferation of intrusive and privacy-invasive ads, a significant proportion of users have started to use ad blockers. As existing ad blockers are radical…
Online advertising is the major source of income for a large portion of Internet Services. There exists a body of literature aiming at optimizing ads engagement, understanding the privacy and ethical implications of online advertising, etc.…
Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) represent a critical operational challenge for the online advertising industry, requiring substantial infrastructure investment while promising improved consumer privacy protection. Even when PETs may…
Web tracking by ad networks, social networks, and other third parties is privacy-invasive. To protect users' privacy an increasing number of countries are adopting new privacy laws. However, a major reason why their application on the web…
This articles surveys the existing literature on the methods currently used by web services to track the user online as well as their purposes, implications, and possible user's defenses. A significant majority of reviewed articles and web…
Third party tracking allows companies to identify users and track their behaviour across multiple digital services. This paper presents an empirical study of the prevalence of third-party trackers on 959,000 apps from the US and UK Google…
To what extent are users surveilled on the web, by what technologies, and by whom? We answer these questions by combining passively observed, anonymized browsing data of a large, representative sample of Americans with domain-level data on…
We analyze the value to e-commerce website operators of offering privacy options to users, e.g., of allowing users to opt out of ad targeting. In particular, we assume that site operators have some control over the cost that a privacy…
Media publisher platforms often face an effectiveness-nuisance tradeoff: more annoying ads can be more effective for some advertisers because of their ability to attract attention, but after attracting viewers' attention, their nuisance to…
A large share of all online display advertisements (ads) are never seen by a human. For instance, an ad could appear below the page fold, where a user never scrolls. Yet, an ad is essentially ineffective if it is not at least somewhat…
Context: In-app advertising is the primary source of revenue for many mobile apps. The cost of advertising (ad cost) is non-negligible for app developers to ensure a good user experience and continuous profits. Previous studies mainly focus…
Many internet ventures rely on advertising for their revenue. However, users feel discontent by the presence of ads on the websites they visit, as the data-size of ads is often comparable to that of the actual content. This has an impact…
In an effort to combat ad annoyance in mobile apps, publishers have introduced a new ad format called "Incentivized Advertising" or "Rewarded Advertising", whereby users receive rewards in exchange for watching ads. There is much debate in…
Display advertising normally charges advertisers for every single ad impression. Specifically, if an ad in a webpage has been loaded in the browser, an ad impression is counted. However, due to the position and size of the ad slot, lots of…
Augmented reality technology will likely be prevalent with more affordable head-mounted displays. Integrating novel interaction modalities, such as eye trackers into head-mounted displays could lead to collecting vast amounts of biometric…
Online advertising is progressively moving towards a programmatic model in which ads are matched to actual interests of individuals collected as they browse the web. Letting the huge debate around privacy aside, a very important question in…