The paper formalizes the intuition that brands are consumed for image reasons and that advertising creates a brand's image. The key idea is that advertising informs the public of brand names and creates the possibility of conspicuous consumption by rendering brands a signalling device. In a...

Absurd advertisements are frequently used to attract consumers' attention. This article suggests that such ads may be a double-edged sword. Absurdity evokes both positive ef-fects (resolving schema incongruence) and negative effects (cognitive overload), resulting in a curvilinear overall effect...

Ambient advertising is a creative, innovative form of outdoor advertising that explicitly intends to surprise consumers by placing unexpected advertisements at unusual locations. The rising relevance of ambient advertising is not mirrored in marketing literature yet. No study has empirically...

The existing literature on "two-sided markets" addresses participation externalities, but so far it has neglected pecuniary externalities between competing platforms. In this paper we build a model that incorporates both externalities. In our setup differentiated platforms compete in advertising...

This paper investigates whether newspapers report more favorably about advertising corporate clients than about other firms. Our identification strategy based on high-dimensional fixed effects and high frequency advertising data shows that advertising leads to more positive press coverage. This...