Hurdles to Efficient Digital Marketing

Chapter 6, by Arpita Agnihotri, Saurabh Bhattacharya and Natalia Yannopoulou, details the hurdles advertisers face in optimising digital campaigns. While digital advertising has grown and refined, recent audience adaptations have undermined its efficiency. The chapter discusses issues like ad blocking, ad fraud and the challenges in measuring advertising effectiveness in digital systems. Highlighting new processes that sometimes displace rather than solve problems, the authors explore the dynamics for consumers and publishers related to ad blocking, using examples like the Brave browser that incentivises high-quality consumer attention. The chapter also examines various forms of ad fraud through the lens of principal-agent theory, identifying emerging issues. Additionally, it provides an overview of innovative approaches to measuring digital advertising effectiveness, addressing the associated challenges. Agnihotri, Bhattacharya and Yannopoulou offer grounded insights into the practical difficulties advertisers face in rigorously reviewing and understanding their digital campaigns’ performance.