1. The document examines the hidden costs of mobile advertising for both advertisers and users by analyzing a large dataset of 1270 mobile users over 12 months. 2. It finds that while advertisers pay an average of $0.00071 per ad impression, users bear costs of around $0.0022 per ad in bandwidth and privacy losses that are 3 times higher than what advertisers pay. 3. The costs to users include ads and analytics comprising 19% of data requests, 8.2% of download volume, and over 9% of smartphone power consumption, as well as loss of online anonymity through cookie synchronization tracking users.

1. Panagiotis Papadopoulos
FORTH-ICS, Greece
Nicolas Kourtellis, Evangelos P. Markatos
The Cost of Digital Advertisement:
Comparing User and Advertiser Views

2. Advertising
"Advertising is an audio or visual form of marketing communication
that employs an openly sponsored, non-personal message to promote
or sell a product, service or idea"
William J. Stanton. Fundamentals of Marketing. McGraw-Hill (1984).
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

3. Ad-slot
• Publisher provide a slot in its medium:
• radio/TV: time slot
• newspaper: ad-slot in paper
• website: ad-slot frame
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

4. Same pattern:
• advertiser pays a monetary cost
• buys ad-space in a content provider’s medium
• places their advertisement on the consumer’s side
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

5. Traditional Vs. Digital Advertising
Same 3 participants:
1. Advertiser pays to deliver ad
2. Publisher gets revenue and provides space
3. User gets ads inside the received content
Same roles too??
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

6. Digital advertising
• Digital advertising moves towards more personalized ad
delivery
• Advertisers programmatically buy available ad-slots
• based on how well the advertised product matches the profile of
the user.
• Users get content from ad-supported publishers for free!
Do they?Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

7. In Digital Advertising
Same 3 participants:
1. Advertiser pays to deliver ad
2. Publisher gets revenue and provides space
3. User also pays to get ads inside the received content
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

8. In this paper…
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

9. In this paper...
1. examine the hidden costs of mobile advertising
Ø for both advertiser and user
2. compare them for the same user profiles
3. how fairly they are shared among the two sides?
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr
Goal: Transparency in the costs of digital advertising
for both advertiser and user

10. Large scale analysis
Dataset:
1. 12 months duration
2. 1270 mobile users volunteered
Ø Redirect traffic through our proxy
3. 250M HTTP-only requests
4. 44997 programmatic bought ad-slots
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

11. OpenDAMP
Open Digital Advertising Measurement Platform*
1. Traffic Classification
2. Network Consumption
3. Approximation of Power Consumption
4. Privacy loss
5. Estimation of the per ad-slot price paid by advertisers
*open-source: https://github.com/panpap/openDAMP
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

12. The view of the user
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

13. The view of the user (1/3)
Portion of HTTP requests per content
category for average user.
• Categories:
• Advertising,
• Analytics,
• Social (Facebook, Twitter plugins),
• 3rd Party Content (CDNs, widgets),
• Other
• 23% of HTTP requests associated
with content user is not actually
interested in.
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr
Actual
Content

14. The view of the user (2/3)
How much of the downloaded
volume is related to ads?
• Across the year:
8.2% of total transferred bytes
Ad and Analytics related
• Ad volume increased compared
with 6 years ago:
Øfrom 5.6%* to 7.3%
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr
*Narseo Vallina-Rodriguez, Jay Shah, Alessandro Finamore, Yan Grunenberger, Konstantina Papagiannaki,
Hamed Haddadi, and Jon Crowcroft. Breaking for Commercials: Characterizing Mobile Advertising. IMC’12

15. The view of the user (3/3)
Ø power consumption of network component:
• 7.98% related to ad-traffic
Ø mobile device’s battery:
• 10 hours of ad-free browsing
• 9.2 hours of ad-supported browsing.
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr
Based on the model: Chanmin Yoon, Dongwon Kim, Wonwoo Jung, Chulkoo Kang, and Hojung Cha.
AppScope: Application Energy Metering Framework for Android Smartphone Using Kernel Activity
Monitoring, USENIX ATC’12

16. Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr
How to measure Privacy loss?
• Loss of anonymity on the web
• Users have a specific budget of aliases (cookie IDs)
• Cookie Synchronization (CSync): a mechanism to increase user identifiability
After CSync:
user123==userABC
userABC
user123

17. Leaked cookie IDs
User’s exposure to CSync
• 97% of users with regular
activity on the web affected
Ø( >10 HTTP requests per day)
• median user exposed to 1 CSync
every 140 HTTP requests
Ø(every 3-4 website visits)
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr
How much do tracking entities
know about a user?
• Median user:
ØAs many as 22 tracking entities
learned up to 20% of her cookie IDs
Ø3 tracking entities learned up to 40%
of her cookie IDs

18. The view of the advertiser
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

19. The view of the advertiser (1/3)
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr
Programmatic RTB auctions
Ad Exchange (ADX)
Real-time Auction
Website on the
user’s browser
Demand Side Platforms
(DSPs)
Bid Request (+user info)
Bid Request (+user info)
Bid Request (+user info)
1.35 CPM (+impression)
0.95 CPM (+impression)
Available ad-slot

20. The view of the advertiser (1/3)
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr
1.35 CPM (+impression)
0.95 CPM (+impression)
Available ad-slot
Ad Exchange (ADX)
Real-time Auction
Website on the
user’s browser
Demand Side Platforms
(DSPs)
WINNER
A
D
Impression delivery
(i) you won,
(ii) here’s the charge price,
(iii) the impression is
rendered successfully
Winning
notification
Programmatic RTB auctions

21. The view of the advertiser (2/3)
1. RTB auctions
Ø44997 programmatic bought ad-slots
2. Advertiser’s charge price per ad impression
3. Leverage RTB notification URL (nURL)
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr
Read more: Panagiotis Papadopoulos, Nicolas Kourtellis, Pablo Rodriguez Rodriguez, and Nikolaos Laoutaris..
“If you are not paying for it, you are the product: How much do advertisers pay to reach you?”. IMC ’17,

22. The view of the advertiser (3/3)
Cost per user for advertisers to
display ads across the year.
• average cost per impression:
0.9 CPM (Cost per thousand).
• total cost paid by advertisers for
the median user is 22 CPM.
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

23. Comparison of both views
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

24. Comparison of both views
Per ad:
• median advertiser paid 0.00071
Euros
• median user paid 0.0022 Euros
(in downloaded bytes)
Ø Considering cost per byte in Europe
users got charged 3x more than
advertisers!
• median user got cookie IDs leaked
to 3.4 different entities
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

25. Rebalancing costs
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

26. Rebalancing costs
• Unlimited dataplan
• Ad caching when on WiFi (e.g., CAMEO middleware [MobiSys‘13])
• User compensation (e.g., Basic Attention Token of BRAVE Browser)
üusers are rewarded for their attention
• Choose paid, ad-free content
üNo trackers… (hopefully)
Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr

27. Panagiotis Papadopoulos ~ panpap@ics.forth.gr
1. Ad- and Analytics- related traffic associated with:
• 19% of the total requests
• 8.2% of downloaded volume
• consume more than 9% of the smartphone’s power
2. 97% of regular users are exposed to Cookie Synchronization.
3. Median user:
üanonymity loss through synced cookie IDs
üpays 3x more to download ads, than
what advertisers pay to deliver them!
In summary