Evaluating the Impact of Privacy Regulation on E-Commerce Firms: Evidence from Apple's App Tracking Transparency

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Aridor, Guy; Che, Yeon-Koo; Hollenbeck, Brett; Kaiser, Maximilian; McCarthy, Daniel
• 署名单位: Northwestern University; Columbia University; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles; University of Hamburg; University System of Maryland; University of Maryland College Park
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2024.06600
• 发表日期: 2026
• 关键词: marketing: advertising and media; economics: econometrics; marketing: retailing and wholesaling

摘要

Assembling novel data sets on online advertiser spending, performance, and revenue, we quantify the economic effects of Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) privacy policy on e-commerce firms. We find that conversion-optimized Meta advertisements, affected most by ATT, saw a 37% reduction in click-through rates after ATT. Although firms responded by shifting ad spending from Meta to the Google ecosystem, firms with higher baseline Meta dependence nevertheless experienced a substantial decline in firm-wide revenue relative to firms with lower baseline Meta dependence. We quantify these effects using a variety of methods, finding revenue decreases in the range between 8% and 40% relative to less exposed firms. These declines were primarily borne by smaller e-commerce firms, raising questions about the tradeoffs between consumer privacy and the ability of smaller e-commerce and direct-to-consumer firms to succeed in the product market.