Regulation of the Television Advertising Market: A Toolkit and Its Application Effects

The paper provides an overview of one of the core media-segments of the Russian advertising market, i.e. the television advertising market. The authors demonstrate that its economic nature (as a two-sided market) requires using theoretical and practical antitrust regulation instruments on the basis of the specific structure of the advertising market and peculiarities of pricing. We prove the necessity to focus on identifying the correlation between changes in market concentration and the price level in the television advertising market, which is a central problem for market participants and regulators primarily due to intermediaries operating in the market–media-sellers–that are exclusive sellers of advertising opportunities on television channels. The study generalizes the practice of antitrust legislation in respect of participants of two-sided markets in Russia and abroad. The paper suggests rethinking the concept of antitrust regulation of media-economics.