Lifting the Curtain on Competitive Advertising Effects
(A2025-125507)

AUTHORS

Ivan Guitart, emlyon business school; Sarah Gelper, University of Luxembourg; Christophe Haon, Toulouse Business School; Guillaume Hervet, emlyon business school

ABSTRACT

Programmatic television allows advertisers to quickly schedule their ads taking into account competitors ads timing. We assess the impact of competitors’ television ads on the ad lifts of a focal firm. We develop a model that allows estimating ad lifts at the individual ad level. We calibrate the model using two years of website visits at the minute level and airing information from 16,725 focal firm ads. In a model relating ad lifts and competitors’ ad airings, we find that competitor ads aired before the focal firm’s ads decrease ad lift by 3% and the impact persists for about 3.5 hours. The adverse impact of inferior competitors’ ads is about four times and lasts for longer than that of superior competitors’ ads. Our findings suggest that advertisers should wait for longer before airing ads after the airing of inferior (vs. superior) competitors. Furthermore, the exclusivity windows offered by television stations seem too short to fully protect brands from competitive ad effects.