News and Research articles on Online advertisement

Superplatform: A framework to analyse and regulate Google’s online ad ecosystem

Koray Caliskan, Parsons School of Design
Donald MacKenzie, University of Edinburgh
Addie McGowan, University of Salford
PUBLISHED ON: 18 Feb 2026 DOI: 10.14763/2026.1.2077

The concept of the "superplatform" presents a simple way to describe Google’s vast and complex online ad business as a dual-core system that merges market power, infrastructural dominance, and supply chain demarketisation.

‘Cookie-less’ identification for/against privacy?

Ido Sivan-Sevilla, University of Maryland
Patrick Parham, University of Maryland
Lee McGuigan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
PUBLISHED ON: 6 Aug 2025 DOI: 10.14763/2025.3.2025

The online advertising industry is shifting content monetisation mechanisms to rely on first-party user identification architectures. The paper evaluates these architectures based on a novel typology to assess their privacy implications.