Aleena Karamally

Television advertisements lead to spikes in internet searches for the brand advertised as well as competitors, according to a study by Rady School Associate Professor Kenneth Wilbur and colleagues, Linli Xiu from the University of Minnesota and Rex Du from the University of Houston.

“Marketers are slowly figuring out that what you say in TV affects what people do on Facebook, Google, Twitter and other digital platforms,” said Wilbur. “Historically, communication efforts have lived within separate silos. Today, some organizations are figuring out that these things need to be managed holistically.”

Researchers studied the relationship between television advertisements and internet search spikes in fantasy sports brands and pickup truck brands. In the fantasy sports brands study, researchers found that advertisement content and media factors explained an incremental 54 percent of the variation in post-ad search spikes.

In the pickup truck brands study, which analyzed brand search data from 500,000 minutes and audience data for 40,000 national television advertisements, 75 percent of the incremental search occurs in the two minutes following an advertisement.

Both studies showed that brand-focused ads produced larger search spikes than price-focused ads, and that less informative ads produced larger spikes than more informative ads. Spikes also varied based on the network on which the ad aired and the genre of programming.

Overall, the studies suggest that television advertisements with small audiences produce significant search spokes in the two minutes after the ad airs. As such, post-ad search spikes are important for marketers to consider in conjunction with other metrics.

“The field has shown great interest in the paper. I recently presented results at the Advertising Research Foundation annual conference, a Marketing Science Institute conference, Cornell and Berkeley. Next week I will give the talk at Emory and Google, and then at Kaiser Permanente in May. Google and Kaiser both are discussing the possibility of follow-up research,” said Wilbur.

For decades, insufficient physical activity has been identified as a leading cause of many non-communicable diseases, including strokes, diabetes, heart disease and some kinds of cancer. Still, according to objective measurement approximately 96 percent of adults 20 to 59 in the U.S. do not meet the guidelines of 150 minutes of moderate physical activity and 75 minutes of vigorous physical activity per week.

On Amir, associate professor of Marketing at the Rady School of Management, recently co-authored a paper, Physical Activity Counseling in Primary Care: Insights From Public Health and Behavioral Economics, which helps address this issue. The paper uses principles of behavioral economics to apply an existing method of advising, the 5A framework, to the integration of physical activity counseling into primary care as a preventative medicine measure.

The 5A Framework involves a five-step plan to addressing an insufficient amount of physical activity in a patient’s life. The five steps are assess current physical activity levels, advise on increasing activity levels in relation to patient’s lab reports, agree on a physical activity plan with attainable goals and specific information on frequency and intensity, assist in creating strategies to overcome impediments to meeting goals, and arrange follow-up visits and reminders.

Overall, the paper uses principles of behavioral economics to analyze the reasons for decisions to engage in physical activity. Using these principles, the paper suggests the most effective methods of physical activity counseling for primary care physicians. It also notes the necessity for future research in determining the efficacy of these strategies in a clinical setting.

On the surface, it may seem that baseball cards and stock market trends are completely unrelated – but a recent study by Rady School professor Joseph Engelberg along with Linh Le and Jared Williams from the University of Florida found that the market for baseball cards shares many of the same anomalies that have been documented in financial markets.

In a study of the value of approximately 38,000 baseball cards issued from 1948 to 1996, researchers found that the market for baseball cards featured momentum, price drift in the direction of previous performance and IPO underperformance, much like studies of the stock market.

The findings regarding momentum support the idea that momentum arises because information gradually diffuses across a market. Engelberg, Le and Williams correctly predicted that because of less sophistication in traders of baseball cards (who are mostly younger), momentum would be greater. The researchers concluded that holding outperforming cards for a three-month period generated a 5.6 percent monthly return, compared to the less than 1 percent earned by momentum strategies in the stock market.

Like stocks, price drift in baseball cards occurs in the direction of previous performance. Researchers found that cards that had previously performed well continued to perform better than cards that had previously performed more poorly.

A parallel for IPO underperformance can be seen in newly issued cards and those of rookies. Both Initial Public Offerings of stocks in the stock market and these new cards in the market for baseball cards tend to underperform for a sustained amount of time.

Engelberg, Le and Williams’ research is significant because it supports the idea that financial theories of momentum, price drift, and IPO performance can exist naturally in markets, which do not include factors like dynamic growth rates, dividends or mutual funds.

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in the U.S. However, motivating individuals to be screened for colorectal cancer, especially those with financial barriers or a fear of screening methods, has proved challenging.

Principles of behavioral economics show that financial incentives can be used to alter behavior. As such, offering a small financial incentive to vulnerable populations has been suggested as a solution to insufficient colorectal cancer screening rates. Rady School Associate Professor Ayelet Gneezy recently conducted and published a study in which primary care patients were mailed colorectal test outreach, outreach plus a $5 incentive, or outreach plus a $10 incentive.

The necessary screening completion rates of the groups were 36.9 percent with a financial incentive, compared to 36.2 percent with no financial incentive. These results did not vary significantly based on age, sex, ethnicity, or neighborhood poverty rate. As a result, the study concludes that financial incentives in the amount of $5 or $10 do not have any significant effect on completion of colorectal cancer screening.

The study was conducted in Fort Worth, Texas on a sample of 10,000 uninsured individuals aged 50 to 64 who had visited their primary care physician at least once in the previous year. Individuals were randomly assigned to be in either the control group with no financial incentive, in the $5 compensation group, or in the $10 compensation group.

These findings are some of the first regarding small financial incentives and cancer screening. Although they cannot be applied to other types of cancer screening or larger financial incentives, the findings are important in understanding the applications of behavioral economics.