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Global Digital Cultures GDC

The Glorious Return of Barter: Inside Digital Video Advertising

Prof. Koray Çalışkan, Parsons School of Design, The New School

The RPA Global Digital Cultures & CUS (Centre for Urban Studies, UvA) are pleased to announce a talk on 'The Glorious Return of Barter: Inside Digital Video Advertising' that will take place on the 29th of January.
Date
29 January 2026
Time
16:30 -20:00
Location
Kapitein Zeppos (Gebed Zonder End 5, 1012 HS Amsterdam)
Prof. Koray Çalışkan
Prof. Koray Çalışkan

This talk examines how digital video advertising economies are produced and maintained across platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, Meta, and Netflix. Drawing on a four-year, multi-method research carried out with Donald MacKenzie, it analyzes how impressions are assembled, stabilized, and monetized within a computational supply chain. The talk shows that video platforms are not simply multi-sided markets but stacked economization processes. At the base lies barter, where viewers exchange attention, behavioral data, and cognitive labor for access and entertainment. To name the objects exchanged in these asymmetric relations, the paper introduces dyads—paired valuables (such as data vs entertainment) that supply the raw materials for advertising markets. Built on this foundation, marketization transforms fleeting attention into measurable, comparable, and tradable impressions through technical rules, visibility thresholds, and device-level constraints. The talk concludes that digital video advertising is best understood as a set of stacked-economization platforms organizing contemporary visibility, with significant regulatory and environmental consequences.

Date: Thursday 29th January 2026
Time: 16:30-20:00
Location: Kapitein Zeppos (Gebed Zonder End 5, 1012 HS Amsterdam)

The talk will be followed by a buffet reception, please RSVP using the link below or send an email to gdc@uva.nl 

RSVP here

About the speaker

Koray Çalışkan is a tenured professor teaching economic sociology and design at Parsons School of Design, The New School. His research focuses on markets, AI economies, digital platforms, and online advertising. He is the author of Market Threads: How Cotton Farmers and Traders Create a Global Commodity (Princeton UP) and Data Money: Inside Cryptocurrencies, Their Communities, Markets, and Blockchains (Columbia UP); co-author (with Donald MacKenzie) of Inside Digital Advertising: Platforms, Power, and Material Politics (Polity); and (with Michel Callon and Donald MacKenzie) of Economization: Markets, Platforms and Ecologies (forthcoming from Columbia UP).