Analyzing institutional platform power

Evolving relations of dependence in the mobile digital advertising ecosystem

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6443345
AutoresD B Nieborg (0000-0002-3498-789X, University of Toronto), Thomas Poell (0000-0002-3664-2588, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
Ano2025
Volume27
Fascículo4
Páginas1909-1927
Data de publicação2025-04-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoNew Media & Society (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1461-4448 • E-ISSN: 1461-7315
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/14614448251314405
OpenAlexW4409089156
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas8
Referências citadas30

This article calls for systematic analysis of the accumulation and exercise of institutional platform power in the digital economy. We examine how the relatively open mobile advertising ecosystem is nevertheless dominated by a handful of platform conglomerates, most prominently Google, Facebook, and Apple. Although extant scholarship acknowledges the concentration of corporate power in digital advertising, as well as its cultural, societal, and environmental harms, a comprehensive approach to platform power is missing. Providing a framework to develop such insights, we analyze how shifts in the advertising ecosystem are driven by four interrelated institutional platform strategies: infrastructuralization, platformization, conglomeration, and financialization. The 2021 introduction and subsequent rollout of Apple’s App Tracking Transparency framework serves as an example to demonstrate that even though institutional relationships of dependence are constantly evolving, control over infrastructural nodes tends to entrench the already dominant position of leading platform conglomerates

Advertising · Biology · Business · Digital ecosystem · Ecosystem · Knowledge management · Power (physics · Computer Science · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Digital Marketing and Social Media · Digital Platforms and Economics · Ecology