Is online media a two-sided market?

The study of products or business that concurrently serve two or more “sides” of consumers has been one of the most active areas of microeconomic analysis in the past decade. However, the phrase “two-sided markets” has been used to describe markets with a variety of economic properties. Different articles and economists use the phrase inconsistently. This is probably one of the reasons why the EU antitrust authorities have accepted some industries as two-sided markets while not others. In order to solve the problem, this paper proposes a definition that the term “two-sided markets” should be applied to a product or business if, and only if, it is impossible for the business or product to exist if it is not operated in a two-sided manner. Importantly, this does not include online media.