IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/now/fntmkt/1700000074.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Aggregate Advertising Expenditure in the U.S. Economy: Measurement and Growth Issues in the Digital Era

Author

Listed:
  • Alvin J. Silk
  • Ernst R. Berndt

Abstract

The two components of the advertising industry – the creative sector that develops and produces messages, and the communications sector that transmits messages via various media – have each been greatly affected by advances in creative design and communications technologies. As the media composition of advertising has changed in the last century for both local and national advertising – from newspapers, outdoor and radio advertising to network and cable television, and most recently to internet and digital media – so too has been transformed the very concept of advertising, its functionality and its measurement. We compare four sources of annual nominal U.S. aggregate advertising expenditure data – from the public sector Internal Revenue Service and the U.S. Census Bureau Survey of Service Industries, and the private sector McCann-Erickson and Magna Global advertising agencies – that are available over various time periods. In nominal terms, we estimate the elasticity of advertising expenditures with respect to Gross Domestic Product, and find that this elasticity appears to have increased substantially beginning in the late 1990s – from about 1.4 to 1.9. The timing of this structural break coincides roughly with the decline of print, radio and network and cable television, and the dramatic increase in digital and internet-based advertising. To understand the forces underlying this structural break in nominal advertising expenditures, data on media-specific advertising prices are needed, thereby converting nominal to real advertising. However, currently annual U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index data on digital and many other advertising media prices are only available beginning in 2010. The availability of media-specific quality-constant price indexes would not only enable researchers to trace more completely the recent impact of digital and internet advertising, but would also facilitate contemporary and longstanding issues to be addressed surrounding the measurement of advertising effects, including how variations in the durability of response to advertising across media are related to inter-media price differentials, and why heterogeneity among firms and industries may arise with respect to the procyclicality of advertising policies.

Suggested Citation

  • Alvin J. Silk & Ernst R. Berndt, 2021. "Aggregate Advertising Expenditure in the U.S. Economy: Measurement and Growth Issues in the Digital Era," Foundations and Trends(R) in Marketing, now publishers, vol. 15(1), pages 1-85, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:now:fntmkt:1700000074
    DOI: 10.1561/1700000074
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/1700000074
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1561/1700000074?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
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alvin J. Silk & Marta M. Stiglin, 2016. "Build It, Buy It, or Both? Rethinking the Sourcing of Advertising Services," International Journal of Marketing Studies, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 8(1), pages 1-13, February.
    2. Weiss, Leonard W, 1969. "Advertising, Profits, and Corporate Taxes," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 51(4), pages 421-430, November.
    3. Lester G. Telser, 1964. "Advertising and Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 72, pages 537-537.
    4. L. G. Telser, 1968. "Some Aspects of the Economics of Advertising," The Journal of Business, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41, pages 166-166.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Nadine Lindstädt & Oliver Budzinski, 2011. "Newspaper vs. Online Advertising – Is There a Niche for Newspapers in Modern Advertising Markets?," Working Papers 113/11, University of Southern Denmark, Department of Sociology, Environmental and Business Economics.
    2. Matthias Greuner & David Kamerschen & Peter Klein, 2000. "The Competitive Effects of Advertising in the US Automobile Industry, 1970-94," International Journal of the Economics of Business, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 7(3), pages 245-261.
    3. Daniel Levy & Andrew T. Young, 2021. "Promise, trust, and betrayal: Costs of breaching an implicit contract," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 87(3), pages 1031-1051, January.
    4. Young, Andrew T. & Levy, Daniel, 2014. "Explicit Evidence of an Implicit Contract," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 30(4), pages 804-832.
    5. André de Palma & Gordon M. Myers & Yorgos Y. Papageorgiou, 2022. "PoolLines: Imperfect Public Choice," THEMA Working Papers 2022-25, THEMA (THéorie Economique, Modélisation et Applications), Université de Cergy-Pontoise.
    6. Chan, Tat Y. & Narasimhan, Chakravarthi & Yoon, Yeujun, 2017. "Advertising and price competition in a manufacturer-retailer channel," International Journal of Research in Marketing, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 694-716.
    7. Bernd Görzig & Martin Gornig, 2013. "Intangibles, Can They Explain the Dispersion in Return Rates?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 59(4), pages 648-664, December.
    8. Patrick Kline & Christopher R. Walters, 2019. "On Heckits, LATE, and Numerical Equivalence," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(2), pages 677-696, March.
    9. Wang, Shinn-Shyr & Stiegert, Kyle W., 2006. "The Duopolistic Firm with Endogenous Risk Control: Case of Persuasive Advertising and Product Differentiation," Staff Paper Series 496, University of Wisconsin, Agricultural and Applied Economics.
    10. 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.
    11. ÖRS, Evren, 2006. "The Role of Advertising in Commercial Banking," CEPR Discussion Papers 5461, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    12. Lee, Seung-Hyun & Makhija, Mona & Paik, Yongsun, 2008. "The value of real options investments under abnormal uncertainty: The case of the Korean economic crisis," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 43(1), pages 16-34, January.
    13. Daniel Orr, 1987. "Notes on the mass media as an economic institution," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 53(1), pages 79-95, January.
    14. Howard P. Marvel, 1985. "How Fair Is Fair Trade?," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 3(3), pages 23-35, March.
    15. Chang-Yang Lee, 2002. "Advertising, Its Determinants, and Market Structure," Review of Industrial Organization, Springer;The Industrial Organization Society, vol. 21(1), pages 89-101, August.
    16. Marco A. Haan & José L. Moraga‐González, 2011. "Advertising for Attention in a Consumer Search Model," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 121(552), pages 552-579, May.
    17. Henry G. Grabowski, 1976. "The Effects of Advertising on the Interindustry Distribution of Demand," NBER Chapters, in: Explorations in Economic Research, Volume 3, number 1, pages 21-75, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Carlos E. Carpio & Olga Isengildina-Massa, 2016. "Does Government-sponsored Advertising Increase Social Welfare? A Theoretical and Empirical Investigation," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 38(2), pages 239-259.
    19. Damir Tokic, 2005. "Valuation Of Growth Firms: Theoretical Modeling," Economic Thought and Practice, Department of Economics and Business, University of Dubrovnik, vol. 14(1), pages 13-23, june.
    20. Ambarish Chandra & Matthew Weinberg, 2018. "How Does Advertising Depend on Competition? Evidence from U.S. Brewing," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(11), pages 5132-5148, November.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Market Response Models; Market Forecasting; Time series analysis;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • M31 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Marketing and Advertising - - - Marketing

    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:now:fntmkt:1700000074. 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: Lucy Wiseman (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nowpublishers.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.