IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/oropre/v64y2016i3p705-720.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Competitive Targeted Advertising Over Networks

Author

Listed:
  • Kostas Bimpikis

    (Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305)

  • Asuman Ozdaglar

    (Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139)

  • Ercan Yildiz

    (Customer Research and Insights Team, Google, Menlo Park, California 94043)

Abstract

Recent advances in information technology have allowed firms to gather vast amounts of data regarding consumers’ preferences and the structure and intensity of their social interactions. This paper examines a game-theoretic model of competition between firms that can target their marketing budgets to individuals embedded in a social network. We provide a sharp characterization of the optimal targeted advertising strategies and highlight their dependence on the underlying social network structure. Furthermore, we provide conditions under which it is optimal for the firms to asymmetrically target a subset of the individuals and establish a lower bound on the ratio of their payoffs in these asymmetric equilibria. Finally, we find that at equilibrium firms invest inefficiently high in targeted advertising and the extent of the inefficiency is increasing in the centralities of the agents they target. Taken together, these findings shed light on the effect of the network structure on the outcome of marketing competition between the firms.

Suggested Citation

  • Kostas Bimpikis & Asuman Ozdaglar & Ercan Yildiz, 2016. "Competitive Targeted Advertising Over Networks," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 64(3), pages 705-720, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:64:y:2016:i:3:p:705-720
    DOI: 10.1287/opre.2015.1430
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/opre.2015.1430
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/opre.2015.1430?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Joe A. Dodson, Jr. & Eitan Muller, 1978. "Models of New Product Diffusion Through Advertising and Word-of-Mouth," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(15), pages 1568-1578, November.
    2. Prasad A. Naik & Murali K. Mantrala & Alan G. Sawyer, 1998. "Planning Media Schedules in the Presence of Dynamic Advertising Quality," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(3), pages 214-235.
    3. , & , & ,, 2014. "Dynamics of information exchange in endogenous social networks," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 9(1), January.
    4. Coralio Ballester & Antoni Calvó-Armengol & Yves Zenou, 2006. "Who's Who in Networks. Wanted: The Key Player," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 74(5), pages 1403-1417, September.
    5. Dirk Bergemann & Juuso Välimäki, 2000. "Experimentation in Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 67(2), pages 213-234.
    6. David Godes & Dina Mayzlin, 2004. "Using Online Conversations to Study Word-of-Mouth Communication," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 23(4), pages 545-560, June.
    7. Prasad A. Naik & Ashutosh Prasad & Suresh P. Sethi, 2008. "Building Brand Awareness in Dynamic Oligopoly Markets," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(1), pages 129-138, January.
    8. Ozan Candogan & Kostas Bimpikis & Asuman Ozdaglar, 2012. "Optimal Pricing in Networks with Externalities," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 60(4), pages 883-905, August.
    9. Ganesh Iyer & David Soberman & J. Miguel Villas-Boas, 2005. "The Targeting of Advertising," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(3), pages 461-476, May.
    10. Stergios Skaperdas, 1996. "Contest success functions (*)," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 7(2), pages 283-290.
    11. Pavlo Blavatskyy, "undated". "Contest success function with the possibility of a draw: axiomatization," IEW - Working Papers 208, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich.
    12. Lawrence Friedman, 1958. "Game-Theory Models in the Allocation of Advertising Expenditures," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 6(5), pages 699-709, October.
    13. Blavatskyy, Pavlo R., 2010. "Contest success function with the possibility of a draw: Axiomatization," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 267-276, March.
    14. Vijay Mahajan & Eitan Muller & Subhash Sharma, 1984. "An Empirical Comparison of Awareness Forecasting Models of New Product Introduction," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 3(3), pages 179-197.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jia, Hao & Skaperdas, Stergios & Vaidya, Samarth, 2013. "Contest functions: Theoretical foundations and issues in estimation," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 31(3), pages 211-222.
    2. Sebastiano Della Lena, 2019. "Non-Bayesian Social Learning and the Spread of Misinformation in Networks," Working Papers 2019:09, Department of Economics, University of Venice "Ca' Foscari".
    3. Goyal, Sanjeev & Heidari, Hoda & Kearns, Michael, 2019. "Competitive contagion in networks," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 58-79.
    4. Davide Crapis & Bar Ifrach & Costis Maglaras & Marco Scarsini, 2017. "Monopoly Pricing in the Presence of Social Learning," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3586-3608, November.
    5. Elias Carroni & Paolo Pin & Simone Righi, 2020. "Bring a Friend! Privately or Publicly?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(5), pages 2269-2290, May.
    6. Wasser, Cédric, 2013. "A note on Bayesian Nash equilibria in imperfectly discriminating contests," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 66(2), pages 180-182.
    7. Lever Guzmán Carlos, 2010. "Strategic Spending in Voting Competitions with Social Networks," Working Papers 2010-16, Banco de México.
    8. James W. Boudreau & Shane Sanders & Nicholas Shunda, 2019. "The role of noise in alliance formation and collusion in conflicts," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 179(3), pages 249-266, June.
    9. Hao Jia & Stergios Skaperdas, 2011. "Technologies of Conflict," Working Papers 101111, University of California-Irvine, Department of Economics.
    10. André Palma & Soumyanetra Munshi, 2019. "Multi-player, Multi-prize, Imperfectly Discriminating Contests," Methodology and Computing in Applied Probability, Springer, vol. 21(2), pages 593-632, June.
    11. Kjell Hausken, 2021. "Axiomatizing additive multi-effort contests," SN Business & Economics, Springer, vol. 1(11), pages 1-12, November.
    12. Junjie Zhou & Ying-Ju Chen, 2016. "Targeted Information Release in Social Networks," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 64(3), pages 721-735, June.
    13. Lu, Jingfeng & Wang, Zhewei, 2015. "Axiomatizing multi-prize nested lottery contests: A complete and strict ranking perspective," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 127-141.
    14. Huang, Jian & Leng, Mingming & Liang, Liping, 2012. "Recent developments in dynamic advertising research," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 220(3), pages 591-609.
    15. André de Palma & Soumyanetra Munshi, 2012. "Multi-player, Multi-prize, Imperfectly Discriminating Contests," Working Papers hal-00683688, HAL.
    16. Cubel, María & Sanchez-Pages, Santiago, 2016. "An axiomatization of difference-form contest success functions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 131(PA), pages 92-105.
    17. Stauvermann Peter J., 2012. "Accumulation and Growth in the Shadow of Conflicts," Peace Economics, Peace Science, and Public Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 18(1), pages 1-30, April.
    18. Ilan Lobel & Evan Sadler & Lav R. Varshney, 2017. "Customer Referral Incentives and Social Media," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(10), pages 3514-3529, October.
    19. Luis C. Corchón & Marco Serena, 2016. "Properties of Contests," Working Papers tax-mpg-rps-2018-10, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance.
    20. Pelosse, Yohan, 2011. "Equivalence of optimal noisy-ranking contests and Tullock contests," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 47(6), pages 740-748.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:oropre:v:64:y:2016:i:3:p:705-720. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.