Srinivas Tunuguntla and Paul R. Hoban have been selected to receive the Paul E. Green Award for their article “A Near-Optimal Bidding Strategy for Real-Time Display Advertising Auctions,” which appeared in the January 2021 issue (Volume 58, No. 1) of Journal of Marketing Research (JMR).
The Paul E. Green Award recognizes the article in JMR that demonstrates the greatest potential to contribute to the theory, methods, and practice of marketing. It honors the S.S. Kresge Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. The committee overseeing the selection process consisted of Pradeep Chintagunta (University of Chicago), John Hauser (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and Maureen Morrin (Rutgers University).
In recognizing the winning paper, the committee made the following comment:
In their paper “A Near-Optimal Bidding Strategy for Real-Time Display Advertising Auctions,” Tunuguntla and Hoban propose, analyze, and test a practical algorithm that enables advertisers to get the most out of their advertising budgets when bidding for online display advertising. Although the $48 billion display advertising market represents 45% of all digital advertising, bids must be made in milliseconds. The authors’ algorithm runs sufficiently quickly yet achieves very close to what would be achieved by an “oracle” with near-perfect information. More importantly, the algorithm learns as it earns using a multi-arm bandit to find the best parameters. Reanalysis of real bids and outcomes suggests the authors’ algorithm would have improved advertiser outcomes by 11%.
Committee members highlighted the combination of rigorous analysis and practical application to an important and challenging marketing application. The authors derive the algorithm from first principles, prove its properties, and demonstrate how to calibrate and apply it in the world of real-time bidding. Critically, they compare the algorithm to established practice on real data. Such proof-of-concept applications bode well for the ability of academic research to improve practice dramatically for highly relevant industry problems.
In addition to the winning paper, the five other excellent finalists for the award were as follows:
- The Impact of Soda Taxes: Pass-Through, Tax Avoidance, and Nutritional Effects | Stephan Seiler, Anna Tuchman, Song Yao | https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022243720969401
- Psychological Ownership of (Borrowed) Money | Eesha Sharma, Stephanie Tully, Cynthia Cryder | https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022243721993816
- Marketing, Through the Eyes of the Stigmatized | Colleen M. Harmeling, Martin Mende, Maura L. Scott, Robert W. Palmatier | https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022243720975400
- Investigating the Academic Performance and Disciplinary Consequences of School District Internet Access Spending | Yixing Chen, Vikas Mittal, Shrihari (Hari) Sridhar | https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0022243720964130
- The Minimum Wage and Consumer Nutrition | Mike Palazzolo, Adithya Pattabhiramaiah | https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00222437211023475
About the Journal of Marketing Research
Journal of Marketing Research (JMR) is a bimonthly, peer-reviewed journal that strives to publish the best manuscripts available that address research in marketing and marketing research practice. JMR is a scholarly and professional journal. It does not attempt to serve the generalist in marketing management, but it does strive to appeal to the professional in marketing research. JMR is included in the Financial Times Top 50 2016 Research Rank and the UT Dallas Journal List.
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