Anita Elberse

The effectiveness of pre-release advertising for motion pictures: An empirical investigation using a simulated market

Abstract We use data on a movie’s stock price as it trades on the Hollywood Stock Exchange, a popular online market simulation, to study the impact of movie advertising. We find that advertising has a positive and statistically significant effect on expected revenues, but that the effect varies strongly across movies of different “quality”. The point estimate implies that the returns to advertising for the average movie are negative.

Bye-Bye Bundles: The Unbundling of Music in Digital Channels

Fueled by digital distribution, unbundling is prevalent in many information and entertainment industries. What is the effect of this unbundling on sales, and what bundle characteristics drive this effect? The author empirically examines these questions in the context of the music industry, using data on weekly digital-track, digital-album, and physical-album sales from January 2005 to April 2007 for all titles released by a sample of more than 200 artists. The modeling framework, a system of an “album-sales” and a “song-sales” equation estimated with the seemingly unrelated regression method, explicitly accounts for the interaction between sales for the bundle and its components. The findings reveal that revenues decrease significantly as digital downloading becomes more prevalent, but the number of items included in a bundle (a measure of its “objective” value) is not a significant moderator of this effect. Instead, bundles with items that are more equal in their appeal and bundles offered by producers with a strong reputation suffer less from the negative impact of the shift to mixed bundling in online channels.

The Economic Value of Celebrity Endorsements

ABSTRACT What is the pay-off to enlisting celebrity endorsers? Although effects on stock returns are relatively well documented, little is known about any impact on sales—arguably a metric of more direct importance to advertising practitioners. This study of athlete endorsements finds there is a positive pay-off to a firms decision to sign an endorser, and that endorsements are associated with increasing sales in an absolute sense and relative to competing brands. Furthermore, sales and stock returns jump noticeably with each major achievement by the athlete. However, whereas stock-return effects are relatively constant, sales effects exhibit decreasing returns over time. Implications for practitioners are outlined.

Consumer Acceptance of Interactive News in the Netherlands

The convergence of technology and industry has given rise to new interactive forms of television. The question remains: To what extent will these new forms be used by the public? This article focuses on one new form of television—interactive news programs—and describes the results of an in-depth pilot study in the Netherlands concerning the acceptance and use of interactive television news. To compensate for peoples unfamiliarity with interactive news, a professional demo was developed: an example of an interactive NOS Journal, the most popular evening television news program in the Netherlands. The findings indicate that viewers are in general very interested and accepting of interactive news. The results also indicate that people prefer fairly transparent selection methods and like to have an “agent” (a news organization or anchor) select the main stories of the day for them. Hence, media organizations are advised to focus on developments in this area. The fear that the importance of their journalistic role will diminish with the rise of new media seems misguided. In fact, the agent function they fulfill might give them a head start in the new media environment.

‘Beepless in America’: The Social Impact of the Galaxy IV Pager Blackout

Popular conceptions of the ‘information society’ are useful in conveying the social significance of the revolution in information and communication technologies (ICTs). Nevertheless, the idea of an information society fails to provide insights about the role of ICTs in society, and can be misleading in focusing attention on too limited a view of information (Dutton 1999: 3–14).