Coles, Peter, and Benjamin Edelman. “Mobilizing Networked Businesses — Module Note.” Harvard Business School Course Overview Note 911-048, March 2011. (Revised February 2015.) (educator access at HBP. request a courtesy copy.)
This module note presents six strategies for mobilizing networked businesses.
Edelman, Benjamin, and Scott Duke Kominers. “Online Marketing at Big Skinny.” Harvard Business School Case 911-033, February 2011. (Revised February 2012.) (educator access at HBP. request a courtesy copy.)
Describes a wallet maker’s application of seven Internet marketing technologies: display ads, algorithmic search, sponsored search, social media, interactive content, online distributors, and A/B testing. Provides concise introductions to the key features of each technology, and asks which forms of online marketing the company should prioritize in the future. Discusses similarities and differences between online and off-line marketing, as well as issues of marketing campaign evaluation.
Supplement:
Online Marketing at Big Skinny slide supplement – PowerPoint Supplement (HBP 912006)
Teaching Materials:
Online Marketing at Big Skinny – Teaching Note (HBP 911034)
Edelman, Benjamin. “Adverse Selection in Online ‘Trust’ Certifications and Search Results.” Electronic Commerce Research and Applications 10, no. 1 (January-February 2011): 17-25.
Widely used online “trust” authorities issue certifications without substantial verification of recipients’ actual trustworthiness. This lax approach gives rise to adverse selection: the sites that seek and obtain trust certifications are actually less trustworthy than others. Using an original dataset on web site safety, I demonstrate that sites certified by the best-known authority, TRUSTe, are more than twice as likely to be untrustworthy as uncertified sites. This difference remains statistically and economically significant when restricted to “complex” commercial sites. Meanwhile, search engines create an implied endorsement in their selection of ads for display, but I show that search engine advertisements tend to be less safe than the corresponding organic listings.
Edelman, Benjamin. “Bias in Search Results?: Diagnosis and Response.” Indian Journal of Law and Technology 7 (2011): 16-32.
I explore allegations of search engine bias, including understanding a search engine’s incentives to bias results, identifying possible forms of bias, and evaluating methods of verifying whether bias in fact occurs. I then consider possible legal and policy responses, and I assess search engines’ likely defenses. I conclude that regulatory intervention is justified in light of the importance of search engines in referring users to all manner of other sites, and in light of striking market concentration among search engines.
Edelman, Benjamin. “The iPhone at IVK.” Harvard Business School Teaching Note 911-414, October 2010. (educator access at HBP.)
Teaching Note for The iPhone at IVK.
Edelman, Benjamin. “Least-Cost Avoiders in Online Fraud and Abuse.” IEEE Security & Privacy 8, no. 4 (July-August 2010): 78-81.
Web users face considerable fraud, malfeasance, and economic harm that system operators could prevent or mitigate. Although the legal system can respond, regulations have mixed results. I examine the applicable legal rules that constrain online fraud and the economic underpinnings to identify whether those rules assign responsibility to the parties best positioned to take action.
Edelman, Benjamin. “The Pathologies of Online Display Advertising Marketplaces.” Art. 2. SIGecom Exchanges (June 2010).
Display advertising marketplaces place “banner” ads on all manner of popular sites. While these services are widely used, they suffer significant challenges, including weak user response and low accountability for both advertisers and web site publishers. I survey a few major challenges, flagging possible areas for future research.
Edelman, Benjamin, and Michael Schwarz. “Optimal Auction Design and Equilibrium Selection in Sponsored Search Auctions.” American Economic Review 100, no. 2 (May 2010): 597-602. (First circulated in 2006 as Optimal Auction Design in a Multi-unit Environment: The Case of Sponsored Search Auctions. Reprinted in The Economics of E-Commerce, Michael Baye and John Morgan, editors, 2016.)
We characterize the optimal (revenue maximizing) auction for sponsored search advertising. We show that a search engine’s optimal reserve price is independent of the number of bidders and independent of the rate at which click-through rate declines over positions. We separate the effects of reserve price increases into direct effects (on the low bidder) and indirect effects (on others), and we show that most of the incremental revenue from setting reserve price optimally comes from indirect effects.
Edelman, Benjamin, and Thomas R. Eisenmann. “Google Inc.” Harvard Business School Case 910-036, January 2010. (Revised April 2011.) (Winner of ECCH 2011 Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Case Method – Strategy and General Management.) (educator access at HBP.)
Describes Google’s history, business model, governance structure, corporate culture, and processes for managing innovation. Reviews Google’s recent strategic initiatives and the threats they pose to Yahoo, Microsoft, and others. Asks what Google should do next. One option is to stay focused on the company’s core competence, i.e., developing superior search solutions and monetizing them through targeted advertising. Another option is to branch into new arenas, for example, build Google into a portal like Yahoo or MSN; extend Google’s role in e-commerce beyond search, to encompass a more active role as an intermediary (like eBay) facilitating transactions; or challenge Microsoft’s position on the PC desktop by developing software to compete with Office and Windows.
Supplements:
Google Inc. (Abridged) – Case (HBP 910032)
Teaching Materials:
Google inc. and Google Inc. (Abridged) – Teaching Note (HBP 910050)
Moore, Tyler, and Benjamin Edelman. “Measuring the Perpetrators and Funders of Typosquatting.” Lecture Notes in Computer Science. Springer-Verlag. Financial Cryptography and Data Security: Proceedings of the International Conference 6052 (2010). (Introduction, Web appendix.)
We describe a method for identifying “typosquatting”, the intentional registration of misspellings of popular website addresses. We estimate that at least 938,000 typosquatting domains target the top 3,264 .com sites, and we crawl more than 285,000 of these domains to analyze their revenue sources. We find that 80% are supported by pay-per-click ads, often advertising the correctly spelled domain and its competitors. Another 20% include static redirection to other sites. We present an automated technique that uncovered 75 otherwise legitimate websites which benefited from direct links from thousands of misspellings of competing websites. Using regression analysis, we find that websites in categories with higher pay-per-click ad prices face more typosquatting registrations, indicating that ad platforms such as Google AdWords exacerbate typosquatting. However, our investigations also confirm the feasibility of significantly reducing typosquatting. We find that typosquatting is highly concentrated: of typo domains showing Google ads, 63% use one of five advertising IDs, and some large name servers host typosquatting domains as much as four times as often as the web as a whole.