Influenced by Media Brands? A Conjoint Experiment on the Effect of Media Brands on Online Media Planners’ Decision-Making

ABSTRACT

Advertising revenues are a major source of income for media companies such as publishing houses. In the age of digitalisation, generating revenue in the online advertising market is an essential ingredient for future economic viability and competitiveness. However, programmatic advertising as a new marketing technique, as well as the proliferated number of websites and increased competition, has challenged publishing houses to generate revenue within the online advertising market. Therefore, media branding has emerged as an important issue. Since brands in such a B2B market share the same purpose as they do in consumer markets, they too offer the potential for media companies to gain a substantial competitive advantage. This article investigates the importance of media brands in relation to other purchase criteria within online media planning. The results of an Adaptive Choice-Based Conjoint analysis (ACBC) with online media planners suggest that the role of media brands within online media planning is limited and secondary to price and its influence varies over different career levels. Furthermore, a price premium can be obtained for a media brand with a higher perceived utility. This article concludes with implications for media companies.

KEYWORDS:

• Media brands
• b2b brands
• media planning
• advertising
• decision-making
• adaptive choice-based conjoint

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notification

This study has been supported by Sawtooth Software with an academic grant for using the ACBC-Software.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Sawtooth Software Academic grant for using the ACBC Software [0000].

Notes on contributors

Monia Kouki-Block

Monia Kouki-Block is a research assistant and PhD candidate at the University of Hamburg. She studied business administration  and holds a master degree from this University.

Christian-Mathias Wellbrock

Christian-Mathias Wellbrock is a researcher and teacher at Hamburg Media School. His research interests are in the fields of media and technology management, media economics and governance, platform economics, and sports and media management. Christian holds a Master’s degree in Economics and a PhD in Business Administration, both from the University of Hamburg.