Marketing Seminar (2019-23)

Topic: The Medium of Advertising

Speaker: Song Lin, Assistant Professor, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Time: Friday, 22 Nov, 13:30-15:00

Location: Room K02, Guanghua Building 2

Abstract:

Firms often communicate with consumers through mediated advertising. Prior research has mainly focused on how advertising affects consumer behavior, with little progress made on understanding the role of medium in advertising communication. I propose a simple framework to examine the relationship between advertising and its media environment, and explore the implications for advertising management. In particular, I model an information design problem in which consumers are attracted by a medium’s content over time, during which the medium can allocate time slots to display its content or an advertisement, or both if feasible. Consumers can decide what to pay attention to at any point in time given the allocation policy, but due to limited attention, they cannot pay attention to both the ad and media content at the same time. The medium’s incentive is not perfectly aligned with that of consumers because of the potential revenue from selling consumers’ attention to the advertiser. The framework provides a classification of various advertising formats, a simple characterization of optimal ad allocation, and a micro-foundation for the externality of advertising in media markets.

Introduction:

Song Lin is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He holds a PhD in Marketing from MIT. His research interests include product and pricing policies, platform design, consumer learning and search, new products, and advertising. His research has appeared onMarketing Science,Journal of Marketing Research, andManagement Science. He has won the 2013 INFORMS Society for Marketing Science (ISMS) Doctoral Dissertation Proposal Competition, and the finalist for the 2015 John Little Award for the best marketing paper published in Marketing Science and Management Science.

Your participation is warmly welcomed!