Targeting in advertising markets: implications for offline versus online media

We develop a model with many advertisers (products) and many advertising markets (media). Each advertiser sells to a different segment of consumers, and each medium is targeting a different audience. We characterize the competitive equilibrium in the advertising markets and evaluate the implications of targeting. An increase in targeting leads to an increase in the total number of consumer‐product matches, and hence in the social value of advertising. Yet, targeting also increases the concentration of firms advertising in each market. Surprisingly, we then find that the equilibrium price of advertisements is first increasing, then decreasing, in the targeting capacity. We trace out the implications of targeting for competing media. We distinguish offline and online media by their targeting ability: low versus high. As consumers’ relative exposure to online media increases, the revenues of offline media decrease, even though the price of advertising might increase.     

Consumer-generated content and source effects in financial services advertising: An experimental study

Although advertising has previously been under the control of organizations and their advertising agencies, recent advances in technology have seen the emergence of what has come to be known as ‘consumer-generated advertising’. Consumers are now creating their own ads for the brands they love and hate, using inexpensive software and powerful personal computers, and then distributing these via social networks such as YouTube. The consequences for traditional advertisers are profound. Although services marketing scholars have begun to pay attention to this phenomenon, little is known about the source effects of these types of ads, for example whether viewers think they were created by firms, or consumers like themselves. This article describes a series of experiments designed to test source effects in the context of consumer-generated ads in a financial services context, in which it is found that some source effects are present. Implications for marketers as well as future research directions are identified.     

The Effects of Advertising on Mutual Fund Flows: Results from a New Database

We examine 471,000 mutual fund company advertisements from 1997 to 2003 to study advertising's effect on fund inflows. We find advertising is generally ineffective in attracting inflows but was more effective during the bear market despite smaller advertising expenditures during this time. The top 10 advertisers in our sample were most successful in capturing inflows. These companies generated inflows with mutual fund ads; other companies succeeded when advertising their other products and their brand image. Within a fund family, advertising affects the flagship fund differently than the other funds. Sample firms appeared unable to choose correctly between print and TV ads.     

Product market advertising and new equity issues

We analyze the interaction between a firm's product market advertising and its corporate financing decisions. We consider a firm that faces asymmetric information in both the product and financial markets and that needs to raise external financing to fund its growth opportunity (new project). Any product market advertising undertaken by the firm is visible to the financial market as well. In equilibrium, the firm uses a combination of product market advertising, equity underpricing, and underfinancing (raising a smaller amount of external capital than the full information optimum) to convey its true product quality and the intrinsic value of its projects to consumers and investors. The following two predictions arise from our theoretical analysis for the relation between product market advertising and equity underpricing around new equity issues. First, firms choose a higher level of product market advertising when they are planning to issue new equity, compared with situations in which they have no immediate plans to do so. Second, product market advertising and equity underpricing are substitutes for a firm issuing new equity. We empirically test the above two predictions and find supporting evidence in the context of firms making initial public offerings and seasoned equity offerings.     

Comparative advertising: disclosing horizontal match information

Improved consumer information about horizontal aspects of products of similar quality leads to better consumer matching but also to higher prices, so consumer surplus can go up or down, while profits rise. With enough quality asymmetry, though, the higher‐quality (and hence larger) firm's price falls with more information, so both effects benefit consumers. This occurs when comparative advertising is used against a large firm by a small one. Comparative advertising, as it imparts more information, therefore helps consumers. Although it also improves the profitability of the small firm, overall welfare goes down because of the large loss to the attacked firm.     

Advertising dynamics and competitive advantage

Can advertising lead to a sustainable competitive advantage? To answer this question, we propose a dynamic model of advertising competition where firms repeatedly advertise, compete in the product market, and make entry as well as exit decisions. Within this dynamic framework, we study two different models of advertising: in the first model, advertising influences the goodwill consumers extend toward a firm (“goodwill advertising”), whereas in the second model it influences the share of consumers who are aware of the firm (“awareness advertising”). We show that asymmetries may arise and persist under goodwill as well as awareness advertising. The basis for a strategic advantage, however, differs greatly in the two models of advertising. We show that tighter regulation or an outright ban of advertising may have anticompetitive effects and discuss how firms use advertising to deter and accommodate entry and induce exit in a dynamic setting.     

Online advertising and privacy

An online platform auctions an advertising slot. Several advertisers compete in the auction, and consumers differ in their preferences. Prior to the auction, the platform decides whether to allow advertisers to access information about consumers (disclosure) or not (privacy). Disclosure improves the match between advertisers and consumers but increases product prices, even without price‐discrimination. We provide conditions under which disclosure or privacy is privately and/or socially optimal. When advertisers compete on the downstream market, disclosure can lead to an increase or a decrease in product prices depending on the nature of the information.     

Product market advertising and corporate bonds

Research shows that by enhancing visibility, advertising improves stock liquidity and returns. Unlike stock holders, bond holders may view advertising skeptically. Without proven effectiveness in improving revenues, large pre-interest advertising expenditures can be seen as eroding a firm's ability to meet its debt service obligations. We find that although greater advertising by a firm improves liquidity of its bonds in the market, it does not lower the firm's cost of debt. However, firms with ineffective advertising experience reduced bond market liquidity and a higher cost of debt. Without a real positive economic impact, advertising has little or no value for bond investors.     

Is Investor Attention for Sale? The Role of Advertising in Financial Markets

Prior research documents capital market benefits of increased investor attention to accounting disclosures and media coverage; however, little is known about how investors and markets respond to attention‐grabbing events that reveal little nonpublic information. We use daily firm advertising data to test how advertisements, which are designed to attract consumers' attention, influence investors' attention and financial markets (i.e., spillover effects). Exploiting the fact that firms often advertise at weekly intervals, we use an instrumental variables approach to provide evidence that print ads, especially in business publications, trigger temporary spikes in investor attention. We further find that trading volume and quoted dollar depths increase on days with ads in a business publication. We contribute to research on how management choices influence firms' information environments, determinants and consequences of investor attention, and consequences of advertising for financial markets.     

The effects of advertising and solicitation on audit fees

Leading academic and professional accountants have suggested that the crisis in auditing over the past few years may have had its origin in deregulation which allowed firms to advertise their services and solicit new clients, encouraging accounting firms to become more commercial. In this paper, we look at this issue in New Zealand which has the unique distinction of having separated two key forms of deregulation, namely advertising and solicitation, by 6 years. This allows us to separately examine the effect of each form of market competition on audit fees. We find that advertising is associated with increases in fees, not decreases, which suggests that quality-based advertising took place, and not price-based advertising. In contrast, solicitation corresponded with a general decrease in average fees for clients of the Big 8. We interpret this result as indicating an increase in competition among accounting firms. Our results suggest that there may be a much more complex relationship among market competition, advertising and solicitation, and fees than the arguments used to originally justify deregulation.     

Product market competition and corporate advertising expenditure: Evidence from a natural experiment

Using the implementation of “Catalogue for the Guidance of Industries for Foreign Investment” in China in 2015 as an exogenous shock, we adopt the difference-in-differences (DIDs) method to explore the relationship between product market competition and corporate advertising expenditure. The result shows that product market competition significantly promotes corporate advertising expenditure, and the result is robust after conducting a series of robustness tests. In addition, we further examine the effects of product market competition on corporate advertising expenditure in firms with different characteristics. The results show that the effect is more pronounced for non-state-owned enterprises, small-scale firms, and high-tech firms. Overall, this paper supports that product market competition plays a vital role in promoting corporate advertising expenditure.     

False advertising

There is widespread evidence that some firms use false advertising to overstate the value of their products. We consider a model in which a policy maker can punish such false claims. We characterize an equilibrium where false advertising actively influences rational buyers and analyze the effects of policy under different welfare objectives. We establish precise conditions where policy optimally permits a positive level of false advertising and show how these conditions vary intuitively with demand and market parameters. We also consider the implications for product investment and industry self‐regulation and connect our results to the literature on demand curvature.     

The use of advertising activities to meet earnings benchmarks: evidence from monthly data

Using a unique database of monthly media advertising spending, we examine whether managers engage in real earnings management to meet quarterly financial reporting benchmarks. We extend prior literature by (1) separately analyzing advertising activities, allowing us to explore the possibility that managers could reduce or boost advertising to meet benchmarks; (2) analyzing actual activities as opposed to inferring them from reported expenses, which are also subject to accrual choices; (3) investigating the timing, within a quarter, of altered advertising spending; and (4) examining quarterly earnings benchmarks. We find that managers, on average, reduce advertising spending to avoid losses and earnings decreases. However, we also report that firms in the late stages of their life cycle increase advertising to meet earnings benchmarks. Finally, we find some evidence that firms increase advertising in the third month of a fiscal quarter and in the fourth quarter to beat prior year’s earnings.     

Can Companies Influence Investor Behaviour through Advertising? Super Bowl Commercials and Stock Returns

Recent research shows that mood and attention may affect investors’ choices. In this paper we examine whether companies can create such mood and attention effects through advertising. We choose a natural experiment by investigating price reactions and trading activity for firms employing TV commercials in 19 Super Bowl broadcasts over the 1969–2001 period. We find significant positive abnormal returns for firms which are readily identifiable from the ad contents, which is consistent with the presence of mood and attention effects. For recognisable companies with the number of ads greater than the sample mean, the event is followed by an average abnormal one day return of 45 basis points. The effect appears to persist in the short term with the 20‐day post‐event cumulative abnormal returns for such firms averaging 2%. We find significant abnormal net buying activity for small trades in shares of recognised Super Bowl advertisers indicating that small investors tend to be the ones most attracted by the increased publicity.     

Store characteristics in retail oligopoly

I use a consumer choice model for the British supermarket industry to compare the incentives of firms, selecting store characteristics, with the interests of consumers. I perform a series of counterfactual changes to store size and location and rank the alternatives by gains per unit of fixed cost. Jointly, firms gain most from large stores, which increase total consumer expenditure. Individually, however, firm incentives are strongly influenced by business‐stealing effects, resulting in a close agreement with consumers, who value middle‐sized stores and distance‐reducing relocations. These individual firm incentives provide little consumer‐protection justification for recent size and location regulations.     

Price discrimination in political advertising: Evidence from the 2012 presidential election

In 2010, the US Supreme Court loosened contribution limits to Political Action Committees (PACs), sparking fears that big donors could exert outsize influence on elections by funding PAC advertising. However, PACs are potentially handicapped when buying advertising time; data from 2012 reveal that PACs pay 32% above regulated campaign rates. I estimate a model of demand for advertising by PACs, exploiting the misalignment of state and media market borders to address price endogeneity. I find that prices reflect willingness-to-pay for viewer demographics rather than media bias. The estimates further suggest that network-owned stations discriminate more successfully than do local affiliates.     

Sequential location games

We study location games where market entry is costly and occurs sequentially, and where consumers are nonuniformly distributed over the unit interval. We show that for certain classes of densities, including monotone and—under some additional restrictions—hump‐shaped and U‐shaped ones, equilibrium locations can be determined independently of when they are occupied. Our analysis reveals a number of peculiarities of the uniform distribution. Extensions of the model allow for price competition and advertisement in media markets, winner‐take‐all competition, trade‐offs between profits in the short and the long run, and firms operating multiple outlets.     

The value relevance of major media advertising expenditures: Some U.K. evidence

This study examines whether ACNielsen MEAL major media advertising expenditure measures, that are publicly available at a cost, have value relevance. Our results suggest that these advertising-expenditure measures are positively associated with market value. We also find little difference in the value relevance of these expenditures among different sizes of firms. Value relevance is found to be present only for nonmanufacturing firms. This suggests that the costly information provided by ACNielsen MEAL surveys may be potentially useful to market participants in valuing firms, at least for nonmanufacturing firms.     

Corporate Social Responsibility,Tax Aggressiveness,and Firm Market Value

This paper examines the relationship of corporate social responsibility (CSR), tax aggressiveness, and firm market value. An economic model has been developed to show that profit‐maximization firms are willing to incur additional costs in CSR, such as paying more taxes, as long as they can differentiate their products from non‐CSR firms, and that socially conscious consumers will buy products from CSR firms at prices higher than those of non‐CSR firms. The empirical study in this paper indicates that the higher the CSR ranking of a firm, the less likely a firm is to engage in tax aggressiveness. It also indicates that a reputation of higher CSR will enhance firm market value. Using Canadian companies listed in the S&P/TSX 60 index, I find that both firms’ five‐year effective tax rates and annual effective tax rates are positively associated with their overall CSR scores as well as with their social scores. Firms’ five‐year effective tax rates are also positively associated with their governance index. I also find that firms’ overall CSR ranking and governance scores are positively associated with their market value.     

Employee‐friendly practices,product market competition and firm value

In this paper, we examine whether employee‐friendly practices are associated with product market competition, and whether firm value is related to employee‐friendly practices and product market competition. Using a large sample of US firms, we find positive and significant associations between employee friendliness and product market competition, and between firm value and employee friendliness when product market competition is high, consistent with the value creation theory. Both positive relations hold when we account for corporate governance. In addition, using the list of Fortune's ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’ as an alternative measure of employee‐friendly policies, we find firms in more competitive industries are more likely to treat their workers favourably. Furthermore, we find that the market reaction is more positive when firms in more competitive industries are selected for the Fortune list.