ABSTRACT
As researchers explore the business models that enable the rapid spread of disinformation online, the digital advertising market becomes a focus of analysis, particularly the automated ad-trading system called programmatic advertising. This bidding system uses predictive analytics to serve ads to target audiences. At its core, the digital advertising ecosystem comprises publishers who offer ad space inventory and advertisers who compete for it. They communicate in a real-time auction where ad space inventory is bought and sold through machine-to-machine interactions. Curious enough, even though most digital advertising is programmatic nowadays, its inner workings remain obscure. This chapter overviews the programmatic advertising ecosystem and discusses how advertising technology firms (AdTech) operate. Moreover, even though programmatic advertising is becoming the standard mechanism for ad trading, the system is far from perfect. Therefore, the chapter introduces some of its limitations, such as ad fraud, lack of pricing transparency, disregard for privacy, and potential misuse for spreading disinformation.
