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theses

Sponsored search-engine advertising, as one of the dominant online marketing paradigms, has been widely adopted by many advertisers in the contemporary marketplace. Its success can be largely attributed to search engine providers’ ability to facilitate a connection between an individual consumer and firms advertising their products and services. In this dissertation, we develop two essays to examine two major aspects of the interactions between consumers and advertisers, as facilitated by a leading China’s search engine company. In the first essay, we focus on examinations of the impact of various types of branded keywords on consumer click-through rates. Using a two-stage joint probability model, we find that various types of advertisers experience significantly different performance in the field of sponsored search advertising. The difference is not merely drawn from the search engine’s various ranking decisions, but also by consumers who differentiate from one kind to another. On the basis of these observations, we further drill into the explorations of branded keywords strategies applied to each type of advertisers. The empirical insights generated under this theme could shed lights on advertisers with respect to branded keyword selections. In the second essay, we study the impact of displayed paid ads assortment size and composition on consumer click-through behavior in sponsored search advertising. We apply a three-stage joint probability modeling approach to examine these relationships. Our empirical findings show that when the number of displayed ads increases, consumer’s average click-through rate on individual paid ads decreases. Interestingly however, as the displayed ads list grows longer, consumer’s click-through rate on “well-known” brands will significantly increases. With regard to the ads composition appeared in the search results, we find that the more perceivably attractive paid ads displayed at prominent ranks, the less likely that consumer will click on paid ads that shown below them. Our empirical results suggest that, in addition to their popularity with consumers, advertisers need to understand the effect of keywords on assortment size and click-through rate.

ETD_6484

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Ming Cheng

doi:10.7282/T32J6DRB

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.