I’m skipping the AEA meetings at the moment but fortunately a new paper of mine is being presented. It is co-authored with Susan Athey and it is entitled “The Impact of Targeting Technology on Advertising Markets and Media Competition.” Here is the abstract:

This paper examines the impact of geographic targeting technology on local advertising markets when local and general media outlets compete for readers. In a base case, it is demonstrated that when the general outlet adopts such technologies, this does not impact on advertising prices or profits as that outlet expands ad space to meet demand. When wasted impressions are costly or there are advertiser capacity constraints that create competition between outlets for advertisers, this conclusion changes and there is a positive return to targeting. This adoption is likely to adversely impact on local outlet profits.

You can download it here. For a more readable account, here is a link to slides Susan used at a recent FTC conference on how journalism will survive the internet age; also speaking were Arianna Huffington and Rupert Murdoch. It was also webcast.