Some NAICS-based goods and services categories include digital goods and services as well as non-digital goods and services. While BEA's conceptual definition of the digital economy includes all digital goods and services, BEA's initial digital economy estimates excluded any goods that have any nondigital components and many services that have nondigital components. The challenges of estimating the economic contribution of these "partially digital" goods and services led to the decision to present preliminary estimates in March 2018 based only on goods and services categories that are primarily digital. With the latest update in August 2020, BEA has expanded its coverage of e-commerce in the digital economy estimates to include items on a partial basis for the first time, meaning that the digital portion of these partially digital items' value is included in the estimates. This partial inclusion of additional retail and wholesale e-commerce items expands the coverage of our digital economy estimates.
The current digital economy estimates fully exclude the value of industries producing goods and services related to structures that are part of the digital and priced digital intermediary services.