Two sides of the digital advertising coin: putting hypernudging into perspective

Digital advertising markets have evolved into a complex system with
multiple interdependent actors interacting across the supply and demand chains.
Google has emerged as a systemic actor in the digital advertising ecosystem. The company’s presence within each layer of the digital advertising value chain, combined
with the opacity and complexity of the market mechanisms, creates dependency challenges for business users. Google is also a choice architect that shapes users’ experiences on its platform’s business domains, including the experiences of the ads they
are exposed to. Therefore, the company is uniquely positioned to hypernudge users
towards specific market outcomes; it has the ability to steer within markets whilst following its economic imperatives.
Positioning digital advertising by Google within the hypernudging framework provides a new lens for studying its potential for influencing digital advertising market
dynamics and individual users. Hypernudging refers to one of the most sophisticated
data-driven nudging processes that allow for dynamically personalised user steering,
where (when executed perfectly) the right user is reached with the right message, by
the right means, at the right time, as many times as needed. By examining local search
advertising on Google Maps and multi-channel integrated advertising campaigns,
this article shows that both could constitute a form of hypernudging