Publications

April 2000 (Revised June 2001)
Case

DoubleClick Buys Abacus (A)

By: John A. Deighton

By acquiring Abacus, DoubleClick won the power to serve ads with unprecedented precision, because it brought together Web surfers' online and offline identities. Several competitors had developed advanced systems for serving ads on the web, but DoubleClick had the... View Details

Keywords: Information; Rights; Internet and the Web; Ethics; Competitive Advantage; Social Issues; Customer Focus and Relationships; Digital Marketing; Advertising Industry

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24 Feb 2014
Research & Ideas

Uncovering Racial Discrimination in the ‘Sharing Economy’

racial discrimination. In Digital Discrimination: The Case of Airbnb.com, Benjamin G. Edelman and Michael Luca investigate the possibility of racial discrimination against people who advertise properties on... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Advertising; Advertising; Advertising

March 2006 (Revised February 2007)
Case

Massive Incorporated (B)

By: Joseph B. Lassiter III, Clark Gilbert and Victoria Winston

Keywords: Emerging Markets; Product Launch; Digital Marketing; Business Startups; Advertising Industry

28 Jan 2002
Research & Ideas

Read All About It! Newspapers Lose Web War

facing the Internet. Note that in the newspaper industry, digital content initially started with different advertising customers, a different business model, and a whole set of performance characteristics... View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne; Entertainment & Recreation; Information; Publishing

11 Feb 2008
Research & Ideas

Does Democracy Need a Marketing Manager?

propositions represents a market test and signal of what consumers want. Q: Consumer marketing appears to be drifting away from mass market advertising to more targeted approaches made possible by the View Details

Keywords: by Sean Silverthorne

September 2022 (Revised November 2022)
Teaching Note

PittaRosso: Artificial Intelligence-Driven Pricing and Promotion

By: Ayelet Israeli

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 522-046. View Details

2012
Article

Antitrust Scrutiny of Google

By: Benjamin Edelman

I evaluate antitrust claims against Google and propose possible remedies. While Google's specific tactics are often novel, I show connections to practices deemed unlawful over a period of decades, and I identify remedies well grounded in antitrust precedent. View Details

Keywords: Competition; Antitrust; Google; Search; Non-price Terms; Digital Marketing; Lawsuits and Litigation; Advertising Industry; Advertising Industry

Read Now

May 2019
Teaching Note

JUUL and the Vaping Revolution

By: Michael W. Toffel, Trevor Fetter, John Masko and Sarah Mehta

Teaching Note for HBS No. 619-006. View Details

April 2015 (Revised December 2015)
Case

Resuscitating Monitter

By: Benjamin Edelman and Wei Sun

After a Twitter API change and policy change block his fledgling startup, solo entrepreneur Alex Holt evaluates his options. Should he double-down with a major investment in new servers, rewriting his app from scratch, and charging users for a service that he had... View Details

Keywords: Platform Strategy; Envelopment; Dependence; Social Media; Business Strategy; Vertical Integration; Information Technology; Digital Platforms; Advertising Industry; Advertising Industry; Australia

25 May 2010
First Look

First Look: May 25

ad platform can offer, an advertiser may forego use of an ad platform that the advertiser otherwise finds profitable. Mergers between ad platforms can increase advertiser... View Details

Keywords: Martha Lagace

December 2010
Supplement

Ad Classification at Right Media — pre-class slides — supplement

By: Benjamin Edelman

Right Media considers systems and policies to make sure that ads are only shown on web sites where they are appropriate, and vice versa. Setting standards is particularly challenging given the large and growing marketplace, the numerous participants, their diverse... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Market Participation; Negotiation Tactics; Marketing Communications; Communication; Media; Advertising Industry; Advertising Industry

August 2020 (Revised January 2021)
Supplement

Facelift at Olay (B)

By: Sunil Gupta, Rajiv Lal and Olivia Hull

This supplement to Facelift at Olay (A) explains the major steps Procter & Gamble’s skincare brand Olay took to reverse several years of declining sales. View Details

Keywords: Advertising; Advertising Campaigns; Demographics; Age; Brands and Branding; Marketing Channels; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Digital Marketing; Transformation; Marketing Strategy; Social Marketing; Beauty and Cosmetics Industry; United States; Ohio

October 2021 (Revised March 2022)
Supplement

PittaRosso: Artificial Intelligence-Driven Pricing and Promotion

By: Ayelet Israeli and Fabrizio Fantini

PittaRosso, a traditional Italian shoe retailer, is implementing an AI system to provide pricing and promotion recommendations. The system allows them to implement changes that would affect both the top of funnel and bottom of funnel activities for the company: once... View Details

January 2019 (Revised March 2021)
Case

SoundCloud: Subscription Streaming?

By: Ashish Nanda, Eric Van den Steen, Andy Wu, Jeffrey Boyar and Bonnie Bennett Slater

Established in 2007, SoundCloud already boasted the second largest number of active music listeners among all streaming services and was recognized as the go-to platform for new artists by early 2014. Yet, its founders were questioning the robustness of the firm’s... View Details

September 2000
Case

Quokka Sports

By: Stephen P. Bradley, Thomas R. Eisenmann, Stephanie Mason Ogborne and Julie C. Toscano

Quokka Sports is an example of one of the new broadband services focused in total immersion sports. Quokka faces two issues: 1) the broadband infrastructure is emerging slowly so the type of services offered needs to be decided on. 2) Quokka faces an explosion of... View Details

Keywords: Digital Marketing; Decisions; Information Publishing; Infrastructure; Competition; Advertising Industry; Advertising Industry

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13 May 2014
First Look

First Look: May 13

"freemium" business model, which is used by some Internet businesses and smartphone application developers to give users free basic features of a digital product and access to premium functionality for a subscription fee. The... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

September–October 2022
Article

Should Your Company Sell on Amazon?: Reach Comes at a Price

By: Ayelet Israeli, Leonard A. Schlesinger, Matt Higgins and Sabir Semerkant

Selling on Amazon allows brands to reach millions of consumers—but that exposure comes with costs. They include smaller margins, more competition, the risk of commoditization, and less knowledge about customers. In this article, the authors present a scorecard to... View Details