The economics of advertising and privacy

One of the new realities of advertising is that personal information can be used to ensure that advertising is only shown and designed for a select group of consumers who stand to gain most from this information. However, to gather the data used for targeting requires some degree of privacy intrusion by advertisers. This sets up a tradeoff between the informativeness of advertising and the degree of privacy intrusion. This paper summarizes recent empirical research that illuminates this tradeoff

Three findings regarding privacy online

The Internet now enables firms to collect detailed and potentially intrusive data about their customers both easily and cheaply. I discuss three empirical results related to customer privacy-protection that is enacted in response to this change

The Reach and Persuasiveness of Viral Video Ads

Many video ads are designed to go viral so that the total number of views they receive depends on customers sharing the ads with their friends. This paper explores the relationship between the number of views and how persuasive the ad is at convincing consumers to purchase or to adopt a favorable attitude towards the product. The analysis combines data on the total views of 400 video ads, and crowd-sourced measurement of advertising persuasiveness among 24,000 survey responses. Persuasiveness is measured by randomly exposing half of these consumers to a video ad and half to a similar placebo video ad, and then surveying their attitudes towards the focal product. Relative ad persuasiveness is on average 10% lower for every one million views that the video ad achieves. The exceptions to this pattern were ads that generated views and large numbers of comments, and video ads that attracted comments that mentioned the product by name. Evidence suggests that such ads remained effective because they attracted views due to humor rather than because they were outrageous.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (CAREER Award 6923256)NET Institut

How Does Our Voice Reflect Who We are? Different Ways of Relating to the Voice and the Self Using Implicit Association Tests.

This study aims to examine individual differences of the voice’s contribution to the self via implicit and explicit associations. A new Implicit Association Test (IAT) about the voice was created and presented to vocal performers and community controls. One-hundred eleven participants completed this voice-related IAT, the Vocal Congruence Scale (VCS), and the Voice Handicap Index (VHI) via an in person, monitored, and timed Qualtrics survey. Findings demonstrated an implicit relationship between the voice and the self. Strength of implicit relationships between self and voice were greater for community controls than vocal performers. This IAT revealed divergent validity with the VCS and VHI. Clinical implications suggest that individuals with an explicit voice relationship may require an overt style of communication, while those with an implicit voice-relationship may still rely on their voice as contributing to their sense of self, even if they do not overtly declare such a relationship

A Reanalysis of the Osteological and Cultural Remains from Ausmus Burial Cave, Claiborne County, Tennessee (3CE20)

Few excavations or analyses of remains from burial caves have been published. Those that are reported are frequently cited without considering context of the original excavations and analyses. This consideration is important, because previously collected data would be interpreted differently using modern approaches. This study is a reanalysis of Ausmus Burial Cave (3CE20), Claiborne County, Tennessee. The site was excavated in the 1930\u27s, and the authors\u27 methodology, conclusion, and conjectures reflect this time. Their hypothesis was that the skeletons represented intruders in the area, they were killed in battle, and their bodies were dropped unceremoniously in the pit cave. This reanalysis: (1) describes the data more completely and from current perspectives, (2) responds to questions concerning human interment in pit caves, and (3) includes additional skeletal material, discovered in 1975. It is concluded that at least 25 Late Woodland/Early Mississippian individuals were recovered from 3CE20. They represent both genders and all age groups, except fetal. There is no statistical difference in age distribution between 3CE20 and other Norris Basin sites of the same time period. The same results are found when 3CE20 individuals are compared to the Late Woodland Hamilton component individuals of Hiwassee Island (42MG31, 46MG31, 47MG31, 73MG31, 78MG31). Statistically significant differences in gender exist between 3CE20 and a 50:50 ratio. However, this result may be spurious. The paleopathological analysis reveals that several pathologies were undetected in the original report or were misdiagnosed. These findings are significant and place serious doubt upon the original interpretation

Adding Insult to Injury: How the ACA’s “Fix” for Nursing Home Compare Staffing Data Misses the Mark

The Baby Boomers are aging, and soon many will require more long-term health care services, looking to the Nursing Home Compare Website (Website) to help guide their choices. The staffing rating on the Website, which rates nursing homes on a scale of one to five, uses a biased formula to generate its ratings. It counts registered nurses twice, completely excludes other important care staff, and uses outdated case-mix adjustments left over from the early 1990’s. In light of the pressing need for accurate data but no mechanism to obtain it, the staffing rating must be eliminated from the Website. Some studies suggest that the number of registered nurses in a facility directly correlates with better care, but these studies fail to account for the changing landscape of nursing home populations and advances in medical technologies. In order to avoid misleading consumers making nursing home care decisions, the staffing rating needs to be fixed, but there is no enforcement mechanism in place to ensure that the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services (CMS) will do so. Faced with the competing pressures of providing good care within budget constraints while also getting high ratings, nursing homes have come under scrutiny with allegations that they “game the system” by submitting false staffing data to the Website. Section 6106 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act attempts to address this concern by requiring staffing data to be more controlled, but this mandate fails to solve any underlying issues. This paper explores these issues behind the staffing ratings, debunks the dated assumption that more registered nurses inherently leads to better care, and implores CMS to change its ways so that nursing home consumers can make accurately informed choices

Understanding Rates of Marijuana Use and Consequences Among Adolescents in a Changing Legal Landscape.

Purpose of Review:There is not one answer to address whether marijuana use has increased, decreased, or stayed the same given changes in state legalization of medical and non-medical marijuana in the USA. Recent Findings:Evidence suggests some health benefits for medical marijuana; however, initiation of marijuana use is a risk factor for developing problem cannabis use. Though use rates have remained stable over recent years, about one in three 10th graders report marijuana use, most adolescents do not view the drug as harmful, and over 650,000 youth aged 12 to 17 struggle with cannabis use disorder. Summary:Although the health benefits of medical marijuana are becoming better understood, more research is needed. Intervention and prevention programs must better address effects of marijuana, acknowledging that while there may be some benefits medically, marijuana use can affect functioning during adolescence when the brain is still developing

How Does Popularity Information Affect Choices? A Field Experiment

Popularity information is usually thought to reinforce existing sales trends by encour- aging customers to ock to mainstream products with broad appeal. We suggest a countervailing market force: popularity information may bene t niche products with narrow appeal disproportionately, because the same level of popularity implies higher quality for narrow-appeal products than for broad-appeal products. We examine this hypothesis empirically using eld experiment data from a web site that lists wed- ding service vendors. Our ndings are consistent with this hypothesis: narrow-appeal vendors receive more visits than equally popular broad-appeal vendors after the intro- duction of popularity information

When Does Retargeting Work? Information Specificity in Online Advertising

Firms can now offer personalized recommendations to consumers who return to their website, using consumers' previous browsing history on that website. In addition, online advertising has greatly improved in its use of external browsing data to target Internet ads. Dynamic retargeting integrates these two advances by using information from the browsing history on the firm's website to improve advertising content on external websites. When surfing the Internet, consumers who previously viewed products on the firm's website are shown ads with images of those same products. To examine whether this is more effective than simply showing generic brand ads, the authors use data from a field experiment conducted by an online travel firm. Surprisingly, the data suggest that dynamic retargeted ads are, on average, less effective than their generic equivalents. However, when consumers exhibit browsing behavior that suggests their product preferences have evolved (e.g., visiting review websites), dynamic retargeted ads no longer underperform. One explanation for this finding is that when consumers begin a product search, their preferences are initially construed at a high level. As a result, they respond best to higher-level product information. Only when they have narrowly construed preferences do they respond positively to ads that display detailed product information. This finding suggests that in evaluating how best to reach consumers through ads, managers should be aware of the multistage nature of consumers' decision processes and vary advertising content along these stages.London Business School. Centre for MarketingNational Science Foundation (U.S.) (CAREER Award 1053398

How Does the Use of Trademarks by Third-Party Sellers Affect Online Search?

Firms that sell via a direct channel and via indirect channels have to decide whether to allow third-party sellers to use trademarked brand names of products in their advertising. This question has been particularly controversial for advertising on search engines. In June 2009, Google started allowing any third-party reseller of a product to use a trademark such as “DoubleTree” in the text of its ad, even if the reseller did not have the trademark holder's permission. We study the effects of this change empirically within the hotel industry. We find some evidence that allowing third-party sellers to use a trademark in their online search advertising weakly reduced the likelihood of a consumer clicking on a trademark holder's paid search ads. However, the decrease in paid clicks was outweighed by a large increase in consumers clicking on the unpaid links to the hotelier's website within the main search results. Our evidence shows that when a third-party seller focuses on a trademarked brand in its ads, the ads become less distinct, and customers are more likely to ignore the advertised offers and buy from the direct channel