Informative Advertising and Optimal Targeting in a Monopoly
研究垄断企业从大众广告转向定向广告如何影响市场结果，发现定向广告可能提高价格、减少广告量，且媒体专业化程度超过社会最优，最终可能降低消费者剩余和社会福利。
This paper analyzes how the transition from mass to specialized advertising can affect the market outcomes. To that end, we consider a particular technology of information transmission which allows a monopolist to decide the optimal targeting strategy. From this starting point, we show that the use of targeted advertising is likely to increase the market price and reduce the level of advertising, and that the degree of media specialization chosen by the monopolist tends to exceed the socially optimal. Furthermore, our model indicates that the social loss resulting from the greater monopoly power might exceed the gain due to the lower wasting of ads, in such a way that targeting could reduce consumer surplus and, what is more important, the level of social welfare.