Media industries are important drivers of popular culture. A large fraction of leisure time is devoted to radio, magazines, newspapers, the Internet, and television (the illustrative example henceforth). Most advertising expenditures are incurred for these media. They are also mainly supported...

This chapter focuses on the economic mechanisms at work in recent models of advertising finance in media markets developed around the concept of two-sided markets. The objective is to highlight new and original insights from this approach, and to clarify the conceptual aspects. The chapter first...

This paper presents a theory of the market provision of broadcasting and uses it to address the nature of market failure in the industry. Advertising levels may be too low or too high, depending on the nuisance cost to viewers, the substitutability of programs, and the expected benefits to...

Advertising messages compete for scarce attention. ?Junk? mail, ?spam? e-mail, and telemarketing calls need both parties to exert effort to generate transactions. Message recipients supply attention depending on average message beneÞt. Senders are motivated by proÞts. Costlier message...

Advertising messages compete for scarce attention. “Junk” mail, “spam” e-mail, and telemarketing calls need both parties to exert effort to generate transactions. Message recipients supply attention depending on average message benefit, while senders are motivated by profits. Costlier...

We customize the aggregative game approach to oligopoly to study asymmetric media markets. Advertiser, platform, and consumer surplus are tied together by a simple summary statistic. When media are ad-financed and ads are a nuisance to consumers we establish see-saws between consumers and...

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...

We customize the aggregative game approach to oligopoly to study asymmetric media markets. Advertiser, platform, and consumer surplus are tied together by a simple summary statistic. When media are ad-financed and ads are a nuisance to consumers we establish see-saws between consumers and...

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...

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...