The Value of Online Users: Empirical Evaluation of the Price of Personalized Ads

Abstract

Ad networks use the behaviors of online users to associate them with preferences (features), and market these features to enable advertisers to target online users. Typical features associated with users include location, interests, gender, age, and etc. Furthemore, ad networks provide their clients with campaing creation tools to help to them to configure and run campains. In this paper, we study the pricing of ads using the ad campaing planning tools of ad networks. We develop tools to collect the suggested bid prices from two platforms: YouTube and Facebook. Analyzing these prices we find that United States is the most expensive country in both platforms. We also find that the most expensive preferences are different in YouTube and Facebook. In YouTube, the top preferences are related to Oil & Gas, while in Facebook are devices, ethnics or politics depending on the type of bidding. Finally, we do not find any price difference genders in Facebook.