Empirical evidence suggests that people dislike ads in media products like TV programs. In such situations standard economic theory prescribes that the advertising volume can be optimally reduced by levying a tax on ads. However, making use of recent advances in the theory of Industrial...

We study a simultaneous move game of targeted advertising and pricing in a market with various consumer segments. In this setting we explore the implications of market segmentation on firm competitiveness. If firms are unable to target their ads on different consumer segments, a unique...

We investigate the relation between Net Neutrality regulation and Internet fragmentation. We model a two-sided market, where Content Providers (CPs) and consumers interact through Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and CPs sell consumers' attention to advertisers. Under Net Neutrality, a...

Digital media goods and digital media platforms exhibit cost structures and network effects that imply that price and quantity effects of consumption taxes are qualitatively different compared to what we typically find for physical goods. For instance, in most European countries and US states,...

Standard media economics models imply that increased platform competition decreases ad levels and that mergers reduce per-viewer ad prices. The empirical evidence, however, is mixed. We attribute the theoretical predictions to the combined assumptions that there is no advertising congestion and...

This paper analyzes persuasive advertising and pricing in oligopoly if firms sell differentiated products and consumers have heterogeneous social attitudes towards the consumption by others. Deriving product demand from primitives, we show that the demand-enhancing effect of persuasive...

We conduct an experiment where subjects read online news articles and are shown ads for brands next to those articles. Using eye-tracking technology, we measure the attention that each individual devotes to each article and ad. Then, respondents choose between cash or vouchers for the brands...