Title: How should search ads platform balance ads quality and quantity: comparison between business search and community search ads

Authors: Xiaoling Li; Hui Yan; Xinjian Li

Addresses: School of Business Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, 182, Nanhu Avenue, East Lake High-Tech Development Zone, Wuhan, 430073, China ' School of Business Administration, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, 182, Nanhu Avenue, East Lake High-Tech Development Zone, Wuhan, 430073, China ' College of Science, Institute of Statistics, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China

Abstract: The pervasiveness innovation of search advertisement calls for more researches on the managerial strategies of search advertisements. These search advertising platforms, which emphasise pay for performance or clicks, has to balance the different needs of ads quantity and ads quality to attract more clicks. Based on two-sided market theory and social judgement theory, our research collected data from two kinds of search ads (business search and community search ads, represented for less nuisance and more nuisance ads) in the same platform, the analysis results showed us that, the advertisement quality improvement for users are much more prominent than the advertisement quantity. Furthermore, the ads quantity increment will moderate the effect of ads quality with inverse U relationship if the search ads is less nuisance, and the ads quantity increment will hinder the effect of ads quality if the search ads is high nuisance.

Keywords: search advertising platforms; two-sided markets; business search ads; search advertisement strategy; search adverts; community search ads; advertisement quantity; search advertisements; advertisement quality; assimilation; contrast; social judgement theory.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTM.2016.079986

International Journal of Services Technology and Management, 2016 Vol.22 No.6, pp.331 - 347

Published online: 25 Oct 2016 *

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