Computational Methods for Improving the Observability of Platform-Based Advertising

Abstract

The advertising ecosystem has been progressively reshaped by computational advertising models facilitated and controlled by digital media platforms. Meta and Alphabet, two of the dominant players in this ecosystem, have contributed significantly to industry disintermediation via the design and market dominance of their advertising systems, which in turn are symbiotic with their own business models, and feed on large amounts of consumer data generated by everyday platform use. The operations and impacts of these systems remain opaque and difficult to observe. Responding to this challenge, we present a methodological framework integrating cultural, legal, media, and computational perspectives ..