IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ormnsc/v70y2024i4p2086-2106.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Consumption of Advertising in the Digital Age: Attention and Ad Content

Author

Listed:
  • Anthony Dukes

    (Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089)

  • Qihong Liu

    (Department of Economics, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma 73019)

Abstract

This article studies the consumption of advertising when attention is costly. Our objective is to understand the advertiser’s optimal decision for informational and noninformational content when facing consumers with heavy distractions common in the digital age. We take an equilibrium approach in which an ad is consumed if and only if the content of the ad is worth the viewer’s attention. We classify many advertising decisions observed in practice. First, an advertiser can structure content to induce curiosity for continued viewing by showing the information that is relatively less likely to resonate with the broad audience. This tactic is evident in clickbait ads and “mystery ads.” Second, we find that digital ads, which tend to be skippable, have lower amounts of noninformational content (e.g., entertainment) relative to nonskippable ads. This finding can explain the industry perception that ads on digital media are of lower copy quality than traditional ads.

Suggested Citation

  • Anthony Dukes & Qihong Liu, 2024. "The Consumption of Advertising in the Digital Age: Attention and Ad Content," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 70(4), pages 2086-2106, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:70:y:2024:i:4:p:2086-2106
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2023.4793
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4793
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/mnsc.2023.4793?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
    ---><---

    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:inm:ormnsc:v:70:y:2024:i:4:p:2086-2106. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    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.