Event Details

The Department of Marketing is delighted to welcome Professor Donald MacKenzie (University of Edinburgh) for his talk: Megamachines That Inhabit Your Phone: The Material Political Economy of Digital Advertising

Up to two trillion ad auctions occur daily, operating at ‘megamachine’ scale with major carbon impact. These vast networks rely on countless physical machines, including your phone, anchored to a 32-digit identifier (e.g., Apple’s IDFA). Drawing on 119 interviews, Professor MacKenzie explores how Apple’s IDFA restrictions disrupted the digital ad economy and reshaped mobile advertising.

A sociologist of technology, Professor MacKenzie’s research on financial markets pioneered the use of philosopher John L. Austin’s performativity theory in business studies. His latest book, Trading at the Speed of Light (2021), examines ultrafast financial algorithms. He is co-authoring Inside Digital Advertising: Platforms, Power, and Material Politics (2025).