Paid media and measurement · Advertising experiment and estimation-method study
Parallel Experimentation and Competitive Interference on Online Advertising Platforms
Waisman, C., Sahni, N. S., Nair, H. S., & Lin, X. (2025). Marketing Science, 44(2), 437–456.
Plain-English take
Ignoring concurrent competitive actions can misestimate advertising lift by a factor of two or more, potentially changing budget decisions. For your marketing: This is a useful caution for campaign tests run in competitive auctions: your measured lift may depend on what other advertisers are doing simultaneously.
How much weight to give this
3.5/5 Useful evidence with meaningful caveats
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.
An experiment is useful for causal evidence, but the accessible profile does not establish random assignment.
A usable sample size is not stated in the profile's accessible source.
Experimental comparison is described; randomization or control details need checking in the paper.
This profile could be checked against an abstract or metadata, not the full paper.
Double-blind? Blinding is not reported in the source reviewed; that does not establish whether blinding was or was not used.
Research question
What the authors investigated
How can advertisers measure ad effects when multiple firms are experimenting at the same time on a platform?
Design
Develops an approach that accounts for parallel advertiser experiments and evaluates it using an experimental design on JD.com.
Sample and setting
Advertising experiments on JD.com, a large e-commerce platform and digital-ad publisher; exact sample counts are not in the abstract.
Reported result
What the study found
Ignoring concurrent competitive actions can misestimate advertising lift by a factor of two or more, potentially changing budget decisions.
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
The publisher abstract does not state limitations or sample counts. The setting involves a major marketplace with overlapping advertiser campaigns.
Possible founder application
A useful caution for campaign tests run in competitive auctions: your measured lift may depend on what other advertisers are doing simultaneously. Coordinate or repeat tests when market conditions shift.
Evidence access
Publisher abstract; full text may require access
INFORMS publisher abstract retrieved with Firecrawl; the reported marketplace setting and effect-size warning are abstract-level.
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.