IDeaS Center Spring 2025 Seminar Series

Upcoming Seminars:

Tuesday April 15, 4:00pm US Eastern -  Hybrid, Zoom and TCS Hall Room 358  

Alessandro Acquisti

Trustees Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz College

An Experimental Infrastructure to Investigate the Impact of Online Tracking, Targeting, and Advertising on Consumer Behavior and Consumer Welfare

I will present the design of a field experiment on the impact of tracking, targeting, ad-blocking, and anti-tracking technologies on consumers’ behavior and economic outcomes. The online data industry has often heralded the benefits of online tracking and targeting, particularly in the context of online advertising. Its claims are juxtaposed by the privacy concerns associated with the vast number of ad-tech companies tracking and analyzing consumers’ online behavior – often without consumers’ awareness. We use a field experiment to analyze the impact of online tracking and targeting as well as ad-blocking and anti-tracking technologies, focusing on consumers’ online behaviors (such as browsing and shopping), and their ultimate purchasing outcomes (as measured by amounts of money spent online, product prices paid, time spent on product searching, and purchase satisfaction).

Bio: Alessandro Acquisti is the Trustees Professor of Information Technology and Public Policy at the Heinz College, Carnegie Mellon University. His research combines economics, behavioral research, and data mining to investigate the role of privacy in a digital society. His studies have promoted the revival of the economics of privacy, advanced the application of behavioral economics to the understanding of consumer privacy valuations and decision-making, and spearheaded the investigation of privacy and personal disclosures in online social networks. His studies have won numerous awards and have been published in journals, books, and proceedings across different fields, including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Management Science, Journal of Economic Literature, Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Journal of Experimental Psychology. Alessandro has testified before the U.S. Senate and House committees on issues related to privacy policy and consumer behavior. His findings have been featured in national and international media outlets, including the Economist, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, Wired.com, NPR, CNN, and 60 Minutes; his TED talks on privacy and human behavior have been viewed over 1.5 million times online. Alessandro holds a PhD from UC Berkeley, and Master degrees from UC Berkeley, the London School of Economics, and Trinity College Dublin.

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The IDeaS Seminar series are held during Spring and Fall semesters. Most seminars are live streamed and available on our YouTube page after the event. 

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**Unless noted all seminars will be held virtually via Zoom. Additional talk details and registration links will be posted online prior to seminar dates. Email centerforideas@andrew.cmu.edu to be added to the mailing list.