IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zbw/itse18/184927.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Is data the new oil? Diminishing returns to scale

Author

Listed:
  • Arnold, René
  • Marcus, J. Scott
  • Petropoulos, Georgios
  • Schneider, Anna

Abstract

A key advantage of online advertising over offline is that online advertising can, with sufficient data, be far more accurately targeted than traditional advertising. But how much data is enough? The empirical literature tends to suggest that there are indeed economies of scale in using data for market targeting, but that these benefits are subject to diminishing returns in a static perspective. Is there a plateau, and is it perhaps very large? It is clear that a certain amount of data is necessary to identify meaningful consumer segments and to offer targeted advertising space as part of an advertising campaign; however, a simple correlation between the volume of data gathered by an advertiser and the return on investment of an advertising campaign neglects the complexity of advertising effectiveness. We provide a general assessment of key elements of the literature on economies of scale in the use of data for online advertising, and then seek to link these to the general literature on market targeting in order to provide insights as to the factors that limit effectiveness in using big data for market targeting.

Suggested Citation

  • Arnold, René & Marcus, J. Scott & Petropoulos, Georgios & Schneider, Anna, 2018. "Is data the new oil? Diminishing returns to scale," 29th European Regional ITS Conference, Trento 2018 184927, International Telecommunications Society (ITS).
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:itse18:184927
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/184927/1/Arnold-et-al.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Avi Goldfarb & Catherine Tucker, 2011. "Online Display Advertising: Targeting and Obtrusiveness," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(3), pages 389-404, 05-06.
    2. Olshavsky, Richard W & Granbois, Donald H, 1979. "Consumer Decision Making-Fact or Fiction?," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 6(2), pages 93-100, Se.
    3. Avi Goldfarb, 2014. "What is Different About Online Advertising?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 44(2), pages 115-129, March.
    4. Thomas Blake & Chris Nosko & Steven Tadelis, 2015. "Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large‐Scale Field Experiment," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 155-174, January.
    5. Avi Goldfarb & Catherine Tucker, 2011. "Rejoinder--Implications of "Online Display Advertising: Targeting and Obtrusiveness"," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(3), pages 413-415, 05-06.
    6. Schaefer, Maximilian & Sapi, Geza & Lorincz, Szabolcs, 2018. "The effect of big data on recommendation quality: The example of internet search," DICE Discussion Papers 284, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf Institute for Competition Economics (DICE).
    7. Petty, Richard E & Cacioppo, John T & Schumann, David, 1983. "Central and Peripheral Routes to Advertising Effectiveness: The Moderating Role of Involvement," Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Consumer Research Inc., vol. 10(2), pages 135-146, September.
    8. Alexander Bleier & Maik Eisenbeiss, 2015. "Personalized Online Advertising Effectiveness: The Interplay of What, When, and Where," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 34(5), pages 669-688, September.
    9. Jonathan Levin & Paul Milgrom, 2010. "Online Advertising: Heterogeneity and Conflation in Market Design," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 603-607, May.
    10. Hildebrandt, Christian & Arnold, René, 2016. "Big Data und OTT-Geschäftsmodelle sowie daraus resultierende Wettbewerbsprobleme und Herausforderungen bei Datenschutz und Verbraucherschutz," WIK Discussion Papers 414, WIK Wissenschaftliches Institut für Infrastruktur und Kommunikationsdienste GmbH.
    11. Yuxin Chen & Chakravarthi Narasimhan & Z. John Zhang, 2001. "Individual Marketing with Imperfect Targetability," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(1), pages 23-41, November.
    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. Georgios Petropoulos & Bertin Martens & Geoffrey Parker & Marshall Van Alstyne, 2023. "Platform Competition and Information Sharing," CESifo Working Paper Series 10663, CESifo.
    2. Ehsan Valavi & Joel Hestness & Newsha Ardalani & Marco Iansiti, 2022. "Time and the Value of Data," Papers 2203.09118, arXiv.org.

    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. Peitz, Martin & Reisinger, Markus, 2014. "The Economics of Internet Media," Working Papers 14-23, University of Mannheim, Department of Economics.
    2. Amin Sayedi, 2018. "Real-Time Bidding in Online Display Advertising," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 37(4), pages 553-568, August.
    3. Bayer, Emanuel & Srinivasan, Shuba & Riedl, Edward J. & Skiera, Bernd, 2020. "The impact of online display advertising and paid search advertising relative to offline advertising on firm performance and firm value," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 789-804.
    4. Wei Zhou & Zidong Wang, 2020. "Competing for Search Traffic in Query Markets: Entry Strategy, Platform Design, and Entrepreneurship," Working Papers 20-12, NET Institute.
    5. Joel Barajas & Ram Akella & Marius Holtan & Aaron Flores, 2016. "Experimental Designs and Estimation for Online Display Advertising Attribution in Marketplaces," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 35(3), pages 465-483, May.
    6. Nico Neumann & Catherine E. Tucker & Kumar Subramanyam & John Marshall, 2023. "Is first- or third-party audience data more effective for reaching the ‘right’ customers? The case of IT decision-makers," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 21(4), pages 519-571, December.
    7. Vilma Todri, 2022. "Frontiers: The Impact of Ad-Blockers on Online Consumer Behavior," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 41(1), pages 7-18, January.
    8. Shun-Yang Lee & Julian Runge & Daniel Yoo & Yakov Bart & Anett Gyurak & J. W. Schneider, 2023. "COVID-19 Demand Shocks Revisited: Did Advertising Technology Help Mitigate Adverse Consequences for Small and Midsize Businesses?," Papers 2307.09035, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2024.
    9. Randall Lewis & Dan Nguyen, 2015. "Display advertising’s competitive spillovers to consumer search," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 13(2), pages 93-115, June.
    10. Avi Goldfarb, 2014. "What is Different About Online Advertising?," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 44(2), pages 115-129, March.
    11. Muhammad Zahid Nawaz & Meng Tao & Hassan Ahmad & Md Jamirul Haque & Shahid Nawaz & Muhammad Nauman Shafique, 2020. "Youngsters and WMAs (WeChat Moments Advertisement): Do We Need the English Language in WMAs?," SAGE Open, , vol. 10(2), pages 21582440209, May.
    12. Xiang Hui & Meng Liu, 2022. "Quality Certificates Alleviate Consumer Aversion to Sponsored Search Advertising," CESifo Working Paper Series 9886, CESifo.
    13. Goh, Khim-Yong & Chu, Junhong & Wu, Jing, 2015. "Mobile Advertising: An Empirical Study of Temporal and Spatial Differences in Search Behavior and Advertising Response," Journal of Interactive Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 34-45.
    14. Garrett Johnson & Julian Runge & Eric Seufert, 2022. "Privacy-Centric Digital Advertising: Implications for Research," Customer Needs and Solutions, Springer;Institute for Sustainable Innovation and Growth (iSIG), vol. 9(1), pages 49-54, June.
    15. Hansen, Nele & Kupfer, Ann-Kristin & Hennig-Thurau, Thorsten, 2018. "Brand crises in the digital age: The short- and long-term effects of social media firestorms on consumers and brands," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 35(4), pages 557-574.
    16. Hana Choi & Carl F. Mela & Santiago R. Balseiro & Adam Leary, 2020. "Online Display Advertising Markets: A Literature Review and Future Directions," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(2), pages 556-575, June.
    17. Bleier, Alexander & Goldfarb, Avi & Tucker, Catherine, 2020. "Consumer privacy and the future of data-based innovation and marketing," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 37(3), pages 466-480.
    18. Weijia Dai & Hyunjin Kim & Michael Luca, 2023. "Frontiers: Which Firms Gain from Digital Advertising? Evidence from a Field Experiment," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 42(3), pages 429-439, May.
    19. Shunyao Yan & Klaus M. Miller & Bernd Skiera, 2020. "How Does the Adoption of Ad Blockers Affect News Consumption?," Papers 2005.06840, arXiv.org, revised Aug 2021.
    20. Jiwoong Shin & Jungju Yu, 2021. "Targeted Advertising and Consumer Inference," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 40(5), pages 900-922, September.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zbw:itse18:184927. 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: ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.itseurope.org/ .

    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.