Advertising: The Effectiveness of Smaller Media and the Role of Self-Selection

In this study, we conduct a large-scale empirical investigation to quantify the sales elasticity of smaller advertising media, such as billboards and cinema, which have often been neglected in the relevant academic literature. when making inference on the sales effectiveness of these small as well as the more traditional media (e.g. TV) for a +250 set of CPG brands, special attention is paid to the role of self-selection. The results of our analysis provide no meta-analytical evidence on the effectiveness of billboard nor cinema advertising, although significant results are obtained for TV and magazine advertising. They also underline the importance of correcting for self-selection bias when quantifying meta-analytic elasticities, not only for the smaller media, but also for the more traditional media.