Targeted

CHAPTER 5

Display Advertising and the Advent of Ad Networks

The saga of free enterprise tells us that markets strive for efficiency. Buyers and sellers tolerate intermediaries as a “necessary” evil. Intermediaries, we are told, skim money that could have gone to the seller or saved the buyer some cash. Instead, they raise prices and take profits when they resell stuff they didn’t create. Without these pesky, cagey intermediaries buying low and selling high, prices would tend toward some value that is described as “natural,” “true,” or in some sense appropriate. It’s the inexorable destiny of such intermediaries to be ousted from their positions. Economists call being eliminated this way disintermediation.

That’s the story, anyway. Here on Planet ...