Showing papers by "Hal R. Varian published in 2017"
TL;DR: The authors used the Super Bowl to study the causal effect of advertising on demand for movies and found that the movies in their sample experience on average incremental opening weekend ticket sales of about $8.4 million from a $3 million Super Bowl advertisement.
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.
47 citations