Competing Quality Conventions in the French Online Advertising Market

Jean-Samuel Beuscart (1) , Kevin Mellet (2)

1 LATTS - Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés
2 CSI i3 - Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation i3

This paper builds upon an empirical study of suppliers of online advertising space in France in order to highlight the plurality of quality conventions that organize the activity of market intermediaries. We show that the market is organized around two different quality conventions, the ‘media’ convention and the ‘direct-response’ convention, each equipped with specific efficiency indicators, pricing methods and selling channels. Then we focus on the growing conflict of territory between the two conventions; we analyse the balance of power between the conventions and the arenas where they compete. We observe that the collective action of the defenders of the traditional world is not (yet) sufficient to contain the pervasiveness of the indicators and metrics from the world of direct-response.

Keywords: quality conventions; market; valuation; quality; conventions; price; advertising; Internet; french online advertising market

Domains: Economics and Finance; Library and information sciences; Sociology

Jean-Samuel Beuscart, Kevin Mellet. Competing Quality Conventions in the French Online Advertising Market. Journal of Cultural Economy, 2013, 6 (4), pp.402 - 418. ⟨10.1080/17530350.2013.772068⟩. ⟨hal-00946749⟩