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I& #39;ve been thinking a lot today about how much advertising effects behavior, but it has ended up in different threads. Organizing it here:
It started with this picture from a recent #polisci paper on the effects of political ads (shown as part of a survey) on attitudes. https://twitter.com/eleafeit/status/1301508168485396480">https://twitter.com/eleafeit/...
As Garrett points out, there is a lot of literature in marketing that shows small effects sizes of advertising. https://twitter.com/garjoh_canuck/status/1301720304859983874">https://twitter.com/garjoh_ca...
https://twitter.com/eleafeit/status/1301925769787183111">https://twitter.com/eleafeit/...
https://twitter.com/eleafeit/status/1301923493966118912">https://twitter.com/eleafeit/...
https://twitter.com/eleafeit/status/1301925194324414467">https://twitter.com/eleafeit/...
https://twitter.com/eleafeit/status/1301927309943934976">https://twitter.com/eleafeit/...
As Avi points out, there are subtle selection effects in the review process for papers on advertising. Often the data comes from companies who have disincentives to publish null effects. https://twitter.com/avicgoldfarb/status/1301849811457437697">https://twitter.com/avicgoldf...
Or it could just be sampling variation, as Brad points out: https://twitter.com/btshapir/status/1301862463676260353">https://twitter.com/btshapir/...
What I& #39;m really interested in is the wide range of effects we see when we look at well-controlled studies. Sure, I& #39;d expect effects to vary across media or across categories, but even within the same retailer, you sometimes see a wide range of positive and negative effects.
Ads are a funny thing and we really don& #39;t understand them very well yet.
But if you want more of an "ad effects are small" perspective, Garrett posted this really nice piece https://twitter.com/garjoh_canuck/status/1301890901376208898">https://twitter.com/garjoh_ca...
And getting back to the original graph I posted, Arman read the paper closely and points out that the definition of "ad treatment" is a little murky. https://twitter.com/StableMarkets/status/1301524016650485760">https://twitter.com/StableMar...
And, finally, Ron points out that small effect != negative ROI (especially when you are talking about elections). https://twitter.com/marketsensei/status/1301512471199592451">https://twitter.com/marketsen...
~*~ Fin ~*~
Oh, and here is one more plot of advertising effects. I told you I couldn& #39;t get enough of them. 
https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="🤓" title="Nerd-Gesicht" aria-label="Emoji: Nerd-Gesicht"> https://twitter.com/garjoh_canuck/status/1194291531932418048">https://twitter.com/garjoh_ca...
