In this matter, martinsdelima acted as an independent economic expert for one of the seven major technology companies to analyze the actual functioning of the advertising ecosystem in Spain and critically assess a party expert report that supported a “closed” view of the digital advertising market. The debate focused on how the relevant market should be defined and what implications that definition has for assessing market power and barriers to entry in an environment where advertising investment moves between multiple channels.
The core of the case was to demonstrate that advertising does not operate as a watertight compartment (for example, “display online” as an isolated unit), but as a competitive system where advertisers combine formats and media (online and offline) in multichannel campaigns, adjusting their mix according to objectives, audiences, and performance. This perspective is key because if the market is defined incompletely or biasedly, the competition analysis may be distorted.
Our analysis underscored that, in practice, all channels compete for user attention (engagement) and, therefore, for the advertising budget: digital media, television, radio, outdoor, press, platforms, and new formats. The choice of channel depends on the advertiser’s objectives and needs, and not on a supposed “natural” belonging to a single and rigid market.
In addition, the case required addressing a particularly sensitive point: the role of data. Faced with approaches that equate “more data” with an automatic advantage, we demonstrated that what is decisive is not the volume, but the ability to convert it into useful information within complete advertising systems, and, above all, having a truly engaged audience. From the advertiser’s perspective, what matters is ROI (Return on Investment), the ability to reach the right audience, and measurement, not data that, moreover, they usually neither know nor observe directly.
We also focused on the economic reality of how advertising spending is decided: budgets are not static, they are continuously reallocated between channels based on results, new tools, and technological changes. This dynamic is reinforced because, typically, advertisers are not tied by long-term exclusivities and can start, pause, or stop campaigns with flexibility, which increases competitive pressure between alternatives.
The martinsdelima methodology combined
(i) structural analysis of the advertising landscape and of the factors that guide the advertiser’s decision (ROI, audience, measurement, costs, and flexibility),
(ii) technical and critical contrast of the hypotheses of the opposing expert report (“online display” market, data, budgets), and
(iii) support in market evidence and real materials used by actors in the sector (for example, commercial proposals and advertising measurement/management tools) to demonstrate what competes with what in practice.
As a result, the work made it possible to present a solid technical narrative: a dynamic and multichannel advertising market, where competition is articulated around efficiency, reach, engagement, measurement, and continuous optimization of ROI (Return on Investment), and where the supposed barriers based solely on “quantity of data” or artificially narrow markets do not reflect the economic reality. The martinsdelima approach was decisive in reinforcing the economic coherence of the case and sustaining a particularly robust position in the process, maximizing the credibility of the analysis and the clarity of the conclusions to third parties.