Macro and Exogenous Factors in Computational Advertising: Key Issues and New Research Directions

To advance the emerging research field of computational advertising this article describes the new computational advertising ecosystem, identifies key actors within it and interactions among them, and discusses future research agendas. Specifically, we propose systematic conceptualization for the redefined advertising industry, consumers, government, and technology environmental factors, and discuss emerging and anticipated tensions that arise in the macro and exogenous factors surrounding the new computational advertising industry, leading to suggestions for future research directions. From multidisciplinary angles, areas of tension and related research questions are explored from advertising, business, computer science, and legal perspectives. The proposed research agendas include exploring transparency of computational advertising practice and consumer education; understanding the trade-off between explainability and performance of algorithms; exploring the issue of new consumers as free data laborers, data as commodity, and related consumer agency challenges; understanding the relationship between algorithmic transparency and consumers’ literacy; evaluating the trade-off between algorithmic fairness and privacy protection; examining legal and regulatory issues regarding power imbalance between actors in the computational advertising ecosystem; and studying the trade-off between technological innovation and consumer protection and empowerment.