Advertising Especially Influences Older Users: Experimental Measurement of Effects on Retail Purchases
Does advertising affect sales in a measurable way? A controlled experiment on 1,577,256 existing customers, exploiting new technologies for tracking individual sales and advertising, produces estimates of the causal effects of brand advertising for a nationwide retailer. The experiment overcomes causal-inference problems common in advertising-effectiveness research. The online advertising in this study generated a statistically and economically significant effect on in-store sales for this retailer. A demographic breakdown of the treatment effect shows surprisingly large effects on the elderly. Customers aged 65 and older exhibited a 20% average increase in sales per person, nearly seven times the average treatment effect..
First version: 16 January 2009
This version: 25 January 2011
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