and Shapiro (1984) hypothesized as applying to advertising.

In their model, captures the fraction of the target population that is exposed to a message and captures advertising technology which drives the total and marginal advertising costs. In their model, attribution technology and automated cross-channel attribution could lead to a reduction in if an ad can be delivered to the population with less waste and more accuracy. The next question is what the equilibrium eects on advertising prices and competition will be, due to these reduced costs? Earlier work in this area such as Chandra (2009) that studied prices of newspaper advertising, suggested that improved targeting could lead to higher prices in advertising markets due to advertising platforms being able to capitalize on delivering better performance to advertisers and the increased attractiveness of advertising leading advertisers to bid up prices. However, such ndings has been challenged by a recent literature when it comes to the digital era. For example, Bergemann and Bonatti (2011) study the impact of targeting on competition between advertising platforms. They point out that improvements in targeting technology, by reducing the number of advertisers competing for each consumer, actually reduce the pricing power of a dominant platform, meaning that advertisers pay lower prices. Similarly Athey and Gans (2010) suggests that improved targeting actually increases eective supply of advertising if advertising space is limited. Translating this result to the question of measurability implies that improved measurability may reduce the pricing of advertising in the presence of platform competition, because it encourages advertisers to jettison unfruitful campaigns and therefore increases the availability of space to display eective campaigns. Levin and Milgrom (2010) go even further and suggest that the thinness of markets implied by excessively ne targeting can lead to downward distortions in prices, and allow advertisers to game publishers by paying low prices for valuable inventory. Therefore, the consumer welfare eects of improved measurability would seem likely to be positive if the reduced prices of advertising for advertisers are passed on to consumers. 18