CANCELLED Advertising and Content Differentiation: Evidence from YouTube (Thursday, 12:30 - 13:45)
Titel: Advertising and Content Differentiation: Evidence from YouTube
Abstract:
I exploit two institutional features of YouTube's monetization policy to identify the effect of an increase in the technically feasible advertising quantity on the YouTubers' content choice. The analysis of around one million YouTube videos shows that an increase in advertising quantity leads to a twenty percentage point reduction in the YouTubers' probability to duplicate mainstream content. A likely economic mechanism is that mainstream content is covered by many competing YouTubers; hence, viewers who perceive advertising as a nuisance could easily switch to a competitor if a YouTuber increased her advertising quantity. This is less likely, when the YouTuber dierentiates her content from her competitors.