Paid media and measurement · Large-scale field experiment randomizing digital advertising for restaurants and comparing heterogeneous treatment effects.
Which Firms Gain from Digital Advertising? Evidence from a Field Experiment
Weijia Dai, Hyunjin Kim, Michael Luca (2023). Which Firms Gain from Digital Advertising? Evidence from a Field Experiment. Marketing Science. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2023.1436.
Plain-English take
Digital advertising gains differ across restaurant types; the experiment identifies which businesses benefit more from advertising. For your marketing: Use to shape a locally controlled channel or message test; account for audience, timing and attribution limits before reallocating budget.
How much weight to give this
3.5/5 Moderate evidence for a specific setting
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.
Large-scale field experiment randomizing digital advertising for restaurants and comparing heterogeneous treatment effects.
Restaurants and their online customers on a digital platform.
Judged from the publisher-described design and comparison; inspect the paper for complete analysis.
Publisher page and abstract were retrieved directly; full text was not assumed open.
Double-blind? Blinding was not established from the retrieved publisher record.
Research question
What the authors investigated
Which types of firms gain most from digital advertising?
Design
Large-scale field experiment randomizing digital advertising for restaurants and comparing heterogeneous treatment effects.
Sample and setting
Restaurants and their online customers on a digital platform.
Reported result
What the study found
Digital advertising gains differ across restaurant types; the experiment identifies which businesses benefit more from advertising.
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
Restaurant platform and local-service setting limit direct transfer to SaaS; heterogeneous effects mean average treatment effects are not universal.
Possible founder application
Use to shape a locally controlled channel or message test; account for audience, timing and attribution limits before reallocating budget.
Evidence access
Publisher record and abstract retrieved; consult the linked paper for full methods and tables.
INFORMS/publisher and author-page records identify a large-scale restaurant field experiment and its authors/context. Direct publisher-page retrieval was recorded on 2026-10-09; this profile uses the publisher abstract/metadata and does not claim independent review of unavailable full text.
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.