Online Display Advertising: Market Design with Competing Intermediaries

Abstract: As many consumers shifted their reading from offline to online publications, ad tech intermediaries emerged to enable online advertising. Some of the new technologies addressed routine challenges and opportunities, while others were innovative attempts to manage the several novel economic challenges posed by market design with competing intermediaries.

Bio: Paul Milgrom is the Ely Professor of Humanities and Sciences in the Department of Economics at Stanford University and the recipient of numerous awards, sharing the 2020 Nobel prize in economics in 2020 for “improvements to auction theory and invention of new auction methods.” In 2024, Milgrom’s company Auctionomics was awarded a technical Emmy for its work designing and implementing the US Broadcast Incentive Auction, which reorganized the use of television spectrum in North America and freed spectrum for mobile broadband applications.