IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/kap/qmktec/v15y2017i1d10.1007_s11129-016-9179-0.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Super returns to Super Bowl ads?

Author

Listed:
  • Seth Stephens-Davidowitz

    (The Wharton School)

  • Hal Varian

    (University of California at Berkeley and Google)

  • Michael D. Smith

    (Carnegie Mellon University)

Abstract

This paper uses a natural experiment—the Super Bowl—to study the causal effect of advertising on demand for movies. Identification of the causal effect rests on two points: 1) Super Bowl ads are purchased before advertisers know which teams will play; 2) home cities of the teams that are playing will have proportionally more viewers than viewers in other cities. We find that the movies in our sample experience on average incremental opening weekend ticket sales of about $8.4 million from a $3 million Super Bowl advertisement.

Suggested Citation

  • Seth Stephens-Davidowitz & Hal Varian & Michael D. Smith, 2017. "Super returns to Super Bowl ads?," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 1-28, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:qmktec:v:15:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s11129-016-9179-0
    DOI: 10.1007/s11129-016-9179-0
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11129-016-9179-0
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s11129-016-9179-0?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ho, Jason Y.C. & Dhar, Tirtha & Weinberg, Charles B., 2009. "Playoff payoff: Super Bowl advertising for movies," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 26(3), pages 168-179.
    2. Sherman, Roger & Tollison, Robert D, 1971. "Advertising and Profitability," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 53(4), pages 397-407, November.
    3. Yelkur, Rama & Tomkovick, Chuck & Traczyk, Patty, 2004. "Super Bowl Advertising Effectiveness: Hollywood Finds the Games Golden," Journal of Advertising Research, Cambridge University Press, vol. 44(1), pages 143-159, March.
    4. Comanor, William S & Wilson, Thomas A, 1971. "On Advertising and Profitability," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 53(4), pages 408-410, November.
    5. Marianne Bertrand & Dean Karlan & Sendhil Mullainathan & Eldar Shafir & Jonathan Zinman, 2010. "What's Advertising Content Worth? Evidence from a Consumer Credit Marketing Field Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 125(1), pages 263-306.
    6. Daniel A. Ackerberg, 2003. "Advertising, learning, and consumer choice in experience good markets: an empirical examination," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 44(3), pages 1007-1040, August.
    7. Ho, Daniel E. & Imai, Kosuke & King, Gary & Stuart, Elizabeth A., 2007. "Matching as Nonparametric Preprocessing for Reducing Model Dependence in Parametric Causal Inference," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(3), pages 199-236, July.
    8. Schmalensee, Richard, 1978. "A Model of Advertising and Product Quality," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 86(3), pages 485-503, June.
    9. Duncan Simester & Yu (Jeffrey) Hu & Erik Brynjolfsson & Eric T. Anderson, 2009. "Dynamics Of Retail Advertising: Evidence From A Field Experiment," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 47(3), pages 482-499, July.
    10. Junsoo Lee & B. S. Shin & In Chung, 1996. "Causality between advertising and sales: new evidence from cointegration," Applied Economics Letters, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 3(5), pages 299-301.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Samuel Nocito & Marcello Sartarelli & Francesco Sobbrio, 2021. "A Beam of Light: Media, Tourism & Economic Development," CESifo Working Paper Series 9055, CESifo.
    2. Ma, Junzhao & Seenivasan, Satheesh & Yan, Bingyu, 2020. "Media influences on consumption trends: Effects of the film Food, Inc. on organic food sales in the U.S," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 320-335.
    3. Wesley R. Hartmann & Daniel Klapper, 2018. "Super Bowl Ads," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 37(1), pages 78-96, January.
    4. Chen He & Tobias J. Klein, 2023. "Advertising as a Reminder: Evidence from the Dutch State Lottery," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(5), pages 892-909, September.
    5. Nocito, Samuel & Sartarelli, Marcello & Sobbrio, Francesco, 2023. "A beam of light: Media, tourism and economic development," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C).
    6. He, Chen & Klein, Tobias, 2018. "Advertising as a Reminder : Evidence from the Dutch State Lottery," Other publications TiSEM 0791692c-433c-4e8d-8374-a, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    7. He, Chen, 2018. "Essays on the role and effects of advertising," Other publications TiSEM 47a3272a-54f1-4a90-9714-c, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    8. Allison Koenecke & Hal Varian, 2020. "Synthetic Data Generation for Economists," Papers 2011.01374, arXiv.org, revised Nov 2020.
    9. Andrey Simonov & Szymon Sacher & Jean-Pierre Dubé & Shirsho Biswas, 2022. "Frontiers: The Persuasive Effect of Fox News: Noncompliance with Social Distancing During the COVID-19 Pandemic," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(2), pages 230-242, March.
    10. Jordi McKenzie, 2023. "The economics of movies (revisited): A survey of recent literature," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(2), pages 480-525, April.
    11. Michael Thomas, 2020. "Spillovers from Mass Advertising: An Identification Strategy," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(4), pages 807-826, July.

    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. Jie Bai, 2016. "Melons as Lemons: Asymmetric Information, Consumer Learning and Seller Reputation," Natural Field Experiments 00540, The Field Experiments Website.
    2. Justin P. Johnson & David P. Myatt, 2006. "On the Simple Economics of Advertising, Marketing, and Product Design," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(3), pages 756-784, June.
    3. Kfir Eliaz & Ran Spiegler, 2011. "Consideration Sets and Competitive Marketing," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 78(1), pages 235-262.
    4. Lauren H. Cohen & Umit G. Gurun, 2018. "Buying the Verdict," NBER Working Papers 24542, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Wipo, 2013. "World Intellectual Property Report 2013 - Brands: Reputation and Image in the Global Marketplace," WIPO Economics & Statistics Series, World Intellectual Property Organization - Economics and Statistics Division, number 2013:944, April.
    6. Grunewald, Andreas & Kräkel, Matthias, 2017. "Advertising as signal jamming," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 55(C), pages 91-113.
    7. Yi-Lin Tsai & Elisabeth Honka, 2021. "Informational and Noninformational Advertising Content," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(6), pages 1030-1058, November.
    8. Régis Chenavaz & Sajjad M. Jasimuddin, 2017. "An analytical model of the relationship between product quality and advertising," Post-Print hal-01685892, HAL.
    9. Randall Lewis & David Reiley, 2014. "Online ads and offline sales: measuring the effect of retail advertising via a controlled experiment on Yahoo!," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 12(3), pages 235-266, September.
    10. Lynne Pepall & Joseph Reiff, 2017. "Targeted Advertising and Cumulative Exposure Effects: The Impact of Banning Advertising to Children in Quebec," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 51(3), pages 235-256, November.
    11. Madhobi Hossain & Tiasha Islam, 2019. "Effect of Advertising Expenses and Sales Incentives on Financial Performance: Dissecting the Cases of Two Market Leaders," Business and Economic Research, Macrothink Institute, vol. 9(1), pages 69-83, March.
    12. Zichen Deng & Maarten Lindeboom, 2021. "Early-life Famine Exposure, Hunger Recall and Later-life Health," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 21-054/V, Tinbergen Institute.
    13. Leah Warfield Smith & Randall Lee Rose & Alex R. Zablah & Heath McCullough & Mohammad “Mike” Saljoughian, 2023. "Examining post-purchase consumer responses to product automation," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Springer, vol. 51(3), pages 530-550, May.
    14. Baron, Opher & Callen, Jeffrey L. & Segal, Dan, 2023. "Does the bullwhip matter economically? A cross-sectional firm-level analysis," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 259(C).
    15. Hattori, Keisuke & Higashida, Keisaku, 2014. "Misleading advertising and minimum quality standards," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 1-14.
    16. Jian Jiu Chen & Sai Yin Ho & Wing Man Au & Man Ping Wang & Tai Hing Lam, 2015. "Family Smoking, Exposure to Secondhand Smoke at Home and Family Unhappiness in Children," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 12(11), pages 1-14, November.
    17. Kube, Roland & von Graevenitz, Kathrine & Löschel, Andreas & Massier, Philipp, 2019. "Do voluntary environmental programs reduce emissions? EMAS in the German manufacturing sector," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 84(S1).
    18. Pracejus, John W. & O'Guinn, Thomas C. & Olsen, G. Douglas, 2013. "When white space is more than “burning money”: Economic signaling meets visual commercial rhetoric," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 211-218.
    19. Day Yang Liu & Wen Chun Tsai & Pei Leen Liu & Chung Yi Fang, 2021. "Determinants of sales revenue in innovation diffusion effects of Taiwan sports lottery during the FIFA World Cup 2018," International Journal of Research in Business and Social Science (2147-4478), Center for the Strategic Studies in Business and Finance, vol. 10(4), pages 43-58, June.
    20. K. Poehlmann & R. Helm & O. Mauroner & J. Auburger, 2021. "Corporate spin-offs’ success factors: management lessons from a comparative empirical analysis with research-based spin-offs," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 15(6), pages 1767-1796, August.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Advertising effectiveness; Measurement; Movies; Super bowl;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
    • M37 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Advertising

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:kap:qmktec:v:15:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1007_s11129-016-9179-0. 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: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    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.