David Evans’ paper, Markets with Two-Sided Platforms, discusses how these two-sided platform businesses serve distinct groups of customers and need each other in some way. They provide these customers a real or virtual meeting place, and they facilitate the interactions between members of these customer groups. They essentially act as intermediaries between the two groups […]

The Review of Network Economics Journal features “The Economics of the Online Advertising Industry” by David S. Evans.
This article considers the Internet-based technologies that are revolutionizing the global advertising industry and the public policy issues they engender. Will a single ad platform emerge or will several remain viable? What are the consequences of alternative […]

Earlier this week the Federal Trade Commission had an amazing two-day workshop on How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age? Rupert Murdoch, Arianna Huffington and many others presented. I gave a talk on Advertising-Supported Media and the Future of Traditional Journalism how the role of advertising and two-sided markets would affect the evolution of the […]

The Federal Trade Commission will hold two days of workshops today and tomorrow, December 1st and 2nd to explore how the Internet has affected journalism.
Watch David Evans present live at 4:30 PM EST Today, December 1st.
The workshop will assemble representatives from print, online, broadcast and cable news organizations, academics, consumer advocates, bloggers, and other […]

It costs a bloody fortune to produce a television series like Mad Men. All those cast members, the period costumes, the smart writers. Right now production companies make these efforts profitable by doing deals with networks like A&E that sell advertising spots. Many of us are recording our favorite shows and watching them later, […]

Lots of people have been talking about social sites cannibalizing search. I’ve addressed this in a prior post since it comes up a lot. eMarketer published a report today that has two interesting findings. First, Google, Bing and Yahoo have little to worry about. They still represent nearly all (like 97.8%) of the search traffic […]

Perhaps not much of a surprise to those in the know, but Bloomberg announced this morning that it is buying the beleaguered Business Week property for somewhere between $2 and $5 million dollars, or the price of a nice apartment on the Upper East Side. Business Week is a media asset owned by McGraw Hill […]

Last Thursday I testified before the House Committee on Financial Services on the “The Credit Card Interchange Fees Act of 2009” sponsored by Representative Welch. The Act would allow merchants to impose surcharges on cards, prevent card networks broadly defined from charging higher interchange fees for reward cards, require card networks to disclose publicly […]

Just when there seemed to be landslide support for charging for content among struggling publishers Yahoo has thrown some cold water on the faces of the eager mob. Of course talk is cheap and online publishers have been approaching subscription models with great trepidation.
So what’s the cold water? The Financial Times today has a […]

Chris Anderson’s book “Free: The Future of a Radical Price” doesn’t get off to a good start for economists. After talking about how common “zero” prices are, Anderson says, “Surely economics must have something to say about this, I thought. But I couldn’t find anything. No theories of gratis, or pricing models that went […]