Marketing agencies and collusive bidding in online ad auctions

Francesco Decarolis, Maris Goldmanis and Antonio Penta ()

Economics Working Papers from Department of Economics and Business, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

Abstract: The transition of the advertising market from traditional media to the internet has induced a proliferation of marketing agencies specialized in bidding in the auctions that are used to sell ad space on the web. We analyze how collusive bidding can emerge from bid delegation to a common marketing agency and how this can undermine the revenues and allocative efficiency of both the Generalized Second Price auction (GSP, used by Google and Microsoft-Bing and Yahoo!) and the of VCG mechanism (used by Facebook). We find that, despite its well-known susceptibility to collusion, the VCG mechanism outperforms the GSP auction both in terms of revenues and efficiency.

Keywords: Collusion; digital marketing agencies; facebook; google; GSP; internet auctions; online advertising; VCG (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 D44 L81 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-com, nep-des, nep-gth, nep-ict, nep-ind, nep-mic, nep-mkt and nep-pay
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Related works:
Journal Article: Marketing Agencies and Collusive Bidding in Online Ad Auctions (2020)
Working Paper: Marketing Agencies and Collusive Bidding in Online Ad Auctions (2019)
Working Paper: Marketing Agencies and Collusive Bidding in Online Ad Auctions (2019)
Working Paper: Marketing Agencies and Collusive Bidding in Online Ad Auctions (2017)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:upf:upfgen:1657

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