Title: Content Exclusivity on Advertising Revenue-Sharing Platforms

Lecturer: Prof. Baojun Jiang, Washington University in St. Louis, USA

Time: June 20, 2024 15:00-16:30 pm

Venue: School of Business 214

Organizer: Department of Management Science and Engineering, Operations and Supply Chain Management Research Center

Synopsis:

  In recent years, many digital content platforms (e.g., YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, and Instagram) have made content published by third-party content providers available to consumers. These platforms display advertisements on the content and share advertising revenue with content providers to incentivize content providers to contribute content. Because digital technology makes it easy for content providers to use multiple platforms, multiple attribution of providers is a major factor in shaping platform competition. In order to maintain a competitive advantage, some content platforms enter into exclusivity contracts with content providers to regulate the providers' multi-platform behavior. In this paper, we develop an analytical model to study the impact of platforms' adoption of exclusivity contracts on market participants. Our analysis finds that with uniform revenue sharing, exclusivity contracts make platforms worse off when consumers' marginal valuation of content is high, suggesting that platforms may prefer not to mandate exclusivity cooperation contracts. In addition, we show that enforcing exclusivity contracts increases content providers' total surplus when consumers' marginal valuation of content is relatively low. Finally, we extend our analysis to consider differential advertising revenue sharing and provide insights into the impact of different multiple attribution regulatory strategies. Our findings have important implications for digital content platform managers, providers, and policymakers.

Introduction to the Lecturer:

  Baojun Jiang is a professor of marketing at the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. He received an M.S. in physics and an M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University, an M.B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in information systems from Carnegie Mellon University. His current research interests include platform-based business models, competitive strategy, behavioral economics, the sharing economy, and marketing-operations interface. His research has been published in top-tier journals such as Management Science, Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Operations Research, and Manufacturing & Service Operations Management. He serves as a Senior Editor at Production and Operations Management, a Department Editor at Service Science, and an Associate Editor at Decision Sciences. He is also on the Editorial Review Boards of Marketing Science and Journal of Marketing Research.