Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large Scale Field Experiment

Thomas Blake, Chris Nosko and Steven Tadelis

No 20171, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Internet advertising has been the fastest growing advertising channel in recent years with paid search ads comprising the bulk of this revenue. We present results from a series of large scale field experiments done at eBay that were designed to measure the causal effectiveness of paid search ads. Because search clicks and purchase behavior are correlated, we show that returns from paid search are a fraction of conventional non-experimental estimates. As an extreme case, we show that brand-keyword ads have no measurable short-term benefits. For non-brand keywords we find that new and infrequent users are positively influenced by ads but that more frequent users whose purchasing behavior is not influenced by ads account for most of the advertising expenses, resulting in average returns that are negative.

JEL-codes: C93 D22 L10 L20 L81 M37 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-mkt
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (54)

Published as Thomas Blake & Chris Nosko & Steven Tadelis, 2015. "Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large‐Scale Field Experiment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 155-174, 01.

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Journal Article: Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large‐Scale Field Experiment (2015)
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