Advertising Effectively Influences Older Users: How Field Experiments Can Improve Measurement and Targeting

Randall Lewis and David Reiley ()

Review of Industrial Organization, 2014, vol. 44, issue 2, 147-159

Abstract: Does advertising measurably affect sales? New technologies for tracking individuals’ sales and ad exposure facilitate studying a nationwide retailer’s online brand advertising effectiveness. A controlled experiment on 1,577,256 existing customers measures the causal effect of advertising on purchases, overcoming the attribution problem by exogenously varying ad exposure. The advertising produced a statistically and economically significant effect on in-store sales. The experiment permits a demographic breakdown. Surprisingly, the effects are large for the elderly. Customers aged 65+, comprising only 5 % of customers, increased purchases by 20 % due to the advertising. This represented 40 % of the total effect among all ages. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014

Keywords: Ad effectiveness; Age; Gender; Field experiment; Online advertising; Targeting (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11151-013-9403-y

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