Email: greg.taylor@oii.ox.ac.uk

Greg Taylor
Microeconomist at the Oxford Internet Institute, University of Oxford

Research Papers & Publications

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Working Papers

I consider the ex post effects of media content: consumers condition later browsing decisions upon ex post realised levels of satisfaction with content already consumed. This compels publishers to invest in satisfying consumers to generate advertiser rents that can subsequently be appropriated. More accurate ad targeting intensifies competition in product markets (as advertisers compete to serve consumers with precisely targeted needs), and thereby strengthens the imperative to rapidly arrest consumer (content) browsing with high-quality content. This dynamic is not unambiguously positive: enhanced content increases product prices, offsetting consumers' welfare gains, whilst better targeting or cheaper content may leave publishers worse-off. (Revised version, Apr 2013; first Version, Jul 2010; this paper was previously titled "Attention Retention: Targeted Advertising and the Provision of Media Content".)

Regulators all over the world worry that integration between search engines (mainly Google) and content websites (Youtube, Zagat...) could lead to abuses of dominant position. In particular, one concern is that of own-content bias, meaning that Google would bias its rankings in favor of the websites it owns, to the detriment of competitors and users. In order to investigate this issue, we develop a theoretical framework in which the search engine (i) allocates users across content websites, and (ii) competes with content websites to attract advertisers. We show that the search engine is biased against websites that display many ads even without integration. Although integration may (but need not) lead to own-content bias, it also has a positive effect on users, by reducing the nuisance costs due to excessive advertising. Its net effect is therefore ambiguous in general, and we provide sufficient conditions for it to be desirable or not. (First Version Oct 2012.)

Peer Reviewed Journal Publications

Consumers are attracted by high quality search results. Search engines, though, essentially compete against themselves as consumers are induced to substitute away from advertisement links when their organic counterparts are of high quality. I characterize the effect of such revenue cannibalisation upon equilibrium quality levels when search engines compete for customer clicks. Revenue cannibalisation provides an incentive for quality degradation, engendering low quality equilibria even when quality provision is costless. When consumers exhibit search engine loyalty there is a ceiling above which result quality cannot rise, regardless of what the maximum technologically feasible quality happens to be. (Revised version, Mar 2012; first version, Aug 2008; this paper was previously titled "Competing Search Engines with Utility Maximising Consumers and Ordinary Search Results").

A well-known myopic bidding strategy fails to support an equilibrium of simultaneous ascending proxy auctions for heterogeneous items when a hard-close rule is in place. This is because, in common with the single-auction case, last minute bidding (sniping) is a best response to naïve behaviour. However, a modification to the myopic strategy in which all bidders submit an additional bid in the closing stages of the auction—a practice I call 'defensive sniping'—is shown to yield an efficient, belief-free equilibrium of such environments. This equilibrium is essentially unique within the class of belief-free, efficient equilibria. (Revised version, Sep 2011; first version, Aug 2007; this paper was previously titled "Ending Rules in Simultaneous Ascending Auctions: Insights From Auctions on the Internet").

Sending general advertisements with inflationary claims may attract additional visitors with whom an advertiser is poorly matched. This is costly when ads are priced per-click because many visitors (clickers) will not purchase. This renders per-click advertising particularly conducive to the transmission of information via ads. The admissibility of information transmission depends not only on advertiser behaviour, but also upon consumers' interpretation of and trust in ads. In less conducive environments, consumers quickly learn to place little stock in the claims they see advertised. This mechanism undermines the ability of advertisers and consumers to communicate under per-impression or per-sale fee structures. Consumers benefit from increased informativeness, but distortions introduced by the market power given to advertisers imply that society may be better-off with no information transmission taking place. (Revised version, Mar 2011; first version, Mar 2009).

Book Contributions & Other Publications