UC EVENTS

Abstract - This thesis examines the role that advertising plays in the creation and trading of the audience commodity and what impact new forms of digital advertising have had on the audience marketplace. The audience marketplace, which consists of advertisers, audiences, media and audience measurement, has been examined from a variety of theoretical and epistemological positions, yet the role advertisers play has generally been consigned to the role of the consumer of the audience product, their role in how the audience marketplace operates largely being overlooked. Using semi-structured interviews with advertising industry practitioners, this research project has revealed not only what role advertisers play in the audience marketplace but how new forms of digital advertising has changed how they operate both internally and with external stakeholders, )including media providers), how they think about audience measurement and data, and the continued importance of human practitioners in the advertising process.