Privacy rules and the small advertisers
Privacy concerns, GDPR, data protection and consumer privacy appear on 81 recent papers, mostly about what consumers feel. Few study what the rules did to the firms that advertise. When tracking became harder, large platforms kept their data and small advertisers lost theirs. Did privacy rules raise concentration?
What prompted this
Since October 2025, 81 papers carry a GDPR, privacy-regulation, data-protection, cookie, app-tracking or consumer-privacy keyword (28 in management journals, 23 in AI, 12 in operations research, 11 in finance): "privacy concerns" on 32, "GDPR" on 9, "data protection" on 9, "consumer privacy" on 8. Thirty-three of them carry an advertising, marketing, targeting, competition or platform keyword, but almost none concerns the firms that buy advertising.
Questions
- After app tracking restrictions and cookie consent rules, did small advertisers' customer acquisition costs rise more than large advertisers', and did some stop advertising online?
- Did the rules move advertising spending toward the platforms with the most first-party data?
- Did new firms find it harder to launch products, and did venture investment in consumer apps fall?
Data that could help
Advertising spending by firm size from advertising platforms and panels, customer acquisition costs from e-commerce data providers, and the dates of privacy changes.
Next step
Compare the advertising cost per acquisition of small and large e-commerce sellers before and after the 2021 app tracking change, using data from an e-commerce analytics provider.