Featured Article: Consumer Data and Digital Competition (February 6th, 2023)

Congressional Communities is featuring one Congressional Research Service (CRS) article per day in effort to share with our readers the wealth of information that the CRS makes readily available.

Today’s featured article, “How Consumer Data Affects Competition Through Digital Advertising,” focuses on the effect consumer data has on online competition. This article falls under the issue area of Commerce. From the CRS:

Digital advertising allows advertisers to send targeted ads, meaning different users viewing the same website or app at the same moment might see different ads. By using targeted ads, websites and apps may have an advantage over other forms of media, such as magazines, radio, and television.

The collection of consumer data may affect competition in digital advertising and raise privacy concerns (see CRS Report R47298, Online Consumer Data Collection and Data Privacy, by Clare Y. Cho and Kristen E. Busch). This In Focus discusses how the collection of consumer data might affect competition among advertisers and among websites and apps that obtain revenue from digital ads.

Interested readers can find the full article here.