Advertising and promotion · Field experiment in mobile search that varies advertising exposure/brand-search advertising and examines consumer responses as evidence about signaling; outcomes include search/ad response and downstream behavior as reported by the article.
Does Advertising Serve as a Signal? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Mobile Search
Navdeep S. Sahni, Harikesh S. Nair (2020). Does Advertising Serve as a Signal? Evidence from a Field Experiment in Mobile Search. The Review of Economic Studies. https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdz053
Plain-English take
The study provides experimental evidence on whether advertising conveys product/firm quality information, rather than merely persuading; exact effect sizes are not asserted here because the fetched DOI page did not expose the full abstract.
How much weight to give this
4/5 Field or experimental evidence with bounded scope
The 1–5 evidence-check score is a practical reading aid, not a formal peer review or a probability that a conclusion is true. It combines design strength (2 points), sample reporting (1), comparison/control clarity (1), and how much of the paper could be checked (1). Access affects how confidently this directory can assess a study, not the study's underlying quality. Blinding is reported separately because it is not relevant to every design.
Field experiment in mobile search that varies advertising exposure/brand-search advertising and examines consumer responses as evidence about signaling; outcomes include search/ad response and downstream behavior as reported by the article.
Mobile-search users and advertisers on a mobile search platform; the DOI landing-page evidence does not report an N in the fetched abstract snippet.
Review the paper for comparison conditions and analysis.
Publisher record checked; detailed methods were not verified.
Double-blind? Blinding was not established from the publisher page.
Research question
What the authors investigated
What does does advertising serve as a signal? evidence from a field experiment in mobile search show about customer behavior or marketing outcomes?
Design
Field experiment in mobile search that varies advertising exposure/brand-search advertising and examines consumer responses as evidence about signaling; outcomes include search/ad response and downstream behavior as reported by the article.
Sample and setting
Mobile-search users and advertisers on a mobile search platform; the DOI landing-page evidence does not report an N in the fetched abstract snippet.
Reported result
What the study found
The study provides experimental evidence on whether advertising conveys product/firm quality information, rather than merely persuading; exact effect sizes are not asserted here because the fetched DOI page did not expose the full abstract.
This is a paraphrase of the source. Check the original paper for definitions, estimates, statistical uncertainty and analysis details.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
Conservative inference: platform, advertiser mix, and mobile-search context may limit generalization to display/social advertising; exact sample size and detailed outcomes require the article/full text beyond the DOI landing evidence. Full-text methods and correction history were not independently checked.
Possible founder application
Use this study as a bounded example related to does advertising serve as a signal? evidence from a field experiment in mobile search; evaluate whether its customers, intervention and outcome match your own context.
Evidence access
Publisher page; full-text availability varies and was not established.
Study metadata and reported results were cross-checked against a direct publisher-page retrieval; detailed full-text methods were not reviewed.
If only an abstract or metadata was available, the profile is limited to claims supported there. A paper's paywall does not change its evidentiary status, but it limits what we can substantiate from accessible text.