The impact of GDPR on online advertising

The book outlines how and why the online advertising industry benefits from using personal data and how privacy laws (the GDPR) impact this practice. They also discuss the complexity of obtaining user permission to process personal data for both firms and users.

To protect user privacy, regulators worldwide are introducing laws restricting firms’ capacity to collect and process personal data. Consequently, firms burden substantial regulatory compliance costs and lose revenue because of the limited access to personal data. However, it is hard to obtain a comprehensive and precise understanding of these costs due to the complexity of the market and the need for an interdisciplinary background (e.g., IT, law, marketing). Their work aims to provide such an understanding to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. 

Dear Yuxi, you graduated from TI not so long ago and joined the marketing department at Goethe University in Frankfurt. I was happy to see you just published a new book with high caliber authors. That’s impressive, as it is very important for any scholar to reach high visibility for her/his research. In fact, your PhD thesis is linked to the content of the book and I look forward to see your papers published soon in leading journals.

Your book gives us the opportunity to provide our current and prospective students what a PhD in Marketing Science may look like. Could you please tell us something about your PhD project?

Thanks for reaching out. I am excited to share my experience with TI/BDS students. I am a second-year PhD student at Goethe University and I work under the supervision of Prof. Bernd Skiera. Working in the Marketing Department allows me to get in touch with people from the industry, which is exciting to me. I realized that advanced quantitative methods are also extensively adopted in Marketing Science.

For my PhD project I empirically analyze the impacts of privacy regulations focusing on the online advertising market. I explain and quantify the consequences for users (e.g., decision cost on cookie banners), firms (e.g., web traffic), and the market (e.g., network).

“Do you have any advice for students in the Marketing Science track?”

I suggest building up a bank of research ideas during your study. The ideas do not need to be super innovative, nor a great contribution. Take it as a daily practice by thinking about questions such as

• What are the problems that users/practitioners/regulators need to solve?
• What are the challenges to solving the problem?
• How can research help to solve the problem?
• What methods/data/theories apply to the research?

I recommend reading not only academic papers but also managerial articles. It’s also important to discuss the ideas, however naïve they are, with your colleagues.

“Which course(s) helped you the most for your current trajectory?”

(Applied) econometric courses