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We examine how the relatively open mobile advertising ecosystem is nevertheless dominated by a handful of platform conglomerates, most prominently Google, Facebook, and Apple. Although extant scholarship acknowledges the concentration of corporate power in digital advertising, as well as its cultural, societal, and environmental harms, a comprehensive approach to platform power is missing. Providing a framework to develop such insights, we analyze how shifts in the advertising ecosystem are driven by four interrelated institutional platform strategies: infrastructuralization, platformization, conglomeration, and financialization. The 2021 introduction and subsequent rollout of Apple\u2019s App Tracking Transparency framework serves as an example to demonstrate that even though institutional relationships of dependence are constantly evolving, control over infrastructural nodes tends to entrench the already dominant position of leading platform conglomerates.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1177\/14614448251314405","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,2]],"date-time":"2025-04-02T11:56:00Z","timestamp":1743594960000},"page":"1909-1927","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1177\/sage-journals-update-policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":17,"title":["Analyzing institutional platform power: Evolving relations of dependence in the mobile digital advertising ecosystem"],"prefix":"10.1177","volume":"27","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3498-789X","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"David B","family":"Nieborg","sequence":"first","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Toronto, Canada"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-3664-2588","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Thomas","family":"Poell","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[{"name":"University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands"}],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"179","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2025,4,2]]},"reference":[{"key":"e_1_3_4_2_1","unstructured":"Apple Inc (2020) Keynote\u2014WWDC20\u2014Videos. 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