International Heterogeneity in Internet Advertising: A Panel Data Analysis of the Effect of Data Privacy Laws

摘要

According to eMarketer, businesses worldwide spent U.S. $102 billion in online advertising in 2012 (emarketer.com, 2013). Likewise, Gartner predicted that from 2013 to 2016, U.S. $677 billion will be spent on cloud sendees globally of which $310 will be spent on cloud advertising. There is, however, large cross-country variation in the development of the online advertising market. For instance, per capita online ad spending in the economies analyzed in this paper varied from U.S. $0.10 in India to U.S. $160 for Norway. Scholars have shown that there is an increasing concern about data privacy. We show that strict data privacy laws may constrain the abilities of advertisers and advertising providers to effectively utilize online advertising. This paper addresses the following what is the role of data privacy regulations on online ad spending? We use the EU's Data Protection Directive as an important benchmark to assess the strictness of data privacy laws.