Audience Economics: Media Institutions and the Audience Marketplace

Focusing on the electronic media -- television, radio, and the Internet -- Audience Economics bridges a substantial gap in the literature by providing an integrated framework for understanding the various businesses involved in generating and selling audiences to advertisers. Examining the relationship between the four principal actors in the audience marketplace -- advertisers, media firms, consumers, and audience measurement firms -- Napoli explains the ways in which they interact with and mutually depend on each other. He also analyzes recent developments, such as the introduction of local people meters by Nielsen Media Research and the establishment and evolution of audience measurement systems for the Internet.