With or without super platforms? Analyzing online publishers’ strategies in the game of traffic

Joni Salminen*, Dmitry Maslennikov, Bernard J. Jansen, Rami Olkkonen

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contributionpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

Given the dominance of online platforms in attracting consumers and advertisers, online publishers are squeezed between declining traffic and advertising revenues from their website content. In turn, super platforms, the dominant content dissemination platforms, such as Google and Facebook, are monetizing online content at the expense of publishers by selling ad impressions in advertising auctions. In this work, we analyze publishers’ possibilities of forming a coalition and show that, under a set of assumptions, the optimal strategy for publishers is cooperation against a super platform rather than posting content on the super platform. Not choosing to publish on a super platform can yield the whole coalition more traffic, enabling some individual publishers to recoup the lost traffic. We further show that if the coalition does not forbid diversification, most publishers choose both coalition and super platform.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationSocial Informatics - 10th International Conference, SocInfo 2018, Proceedings
EditorsSteffen Staab, Olessia Koltsova, Dmitry I. Ignatov
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages251-260
Number of pages10
ISBN (Print)9783030011581
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018
Event10th Conference on Social Informatics, SocInfo 2018 - Saint-Petersburg, Russian Federation
Duration: 25 Sept 201828 Sept 2018

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science (including subseries Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence and Lecture Notes in Bioinformatics)
Volume11186 LNCS
ISSN (Print)0302-9743
ISSN (Electronic)1611-3349

Conference

Conference10th Conference on Social Informatics, SocInfo 2018
Country/TerritoryRussian Federation
CitySaint-Petersburg
Period25/09/1828/09/18

Keywords

  • Advertising
  • Media markets
  • Online content
  • Super platforms

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