Amazon grant for Maarten Gijsenberg

Recently, associate professor Maarten Gijsenberg received a $85,000 grant from Amazon. He received the grant from the Amazon Research Awards Advertising Call for Proposals Summer 2021 for his research on “When, Where, and What amount” a brand should spend on advertising.

Most crucial questions

Should a brand advertise all the time or rather periodically, concentrated in campaigns? Should it then advertise offline and/or online, and how much should it actually spend? These 3 W’s are most crucial to managers when deciding how to use their advertising budget. And while a lot of money is spent on advertising, there is mainly speculation on these issues, and little real insight.

Research

In his research, Gijsenberg will look at what the impact is of different budget allocation strategies for several strategic Key Performance Indicators (KPI) of a brand. He makes a distinction between long-term oriented strategies aimed at building and strengthening a brand and more short-term oriented strategies directed at immediately increasing sales.

“The allocation of their advertising budget has always been a puzzle for managers. This puzzle has only become more complex: besides traditional offline media, we now also have online media to add to the mix, and multiple KPI’s to evaluate. This research is the first to integrate all this into a holistic approach of the issue.”

Gijsenberg’s research will cover both offline and online media, look to which extent media strengthen each other, and evaluate both short-term and long- term KPIs. It will also show the possible trade-offs that managers will need to make when the effects are different from one KPI to the next.

App

The results will be very usable and of direct impact on the decisions managers have to make. Part of the project is the development of a useful app that integrates the insights of the project and that allows managers to evaluate different budget allocation strategies for their advertising across the whole range of KPI’s.

“I am delighted to receive this grant for my research proposal. It recognizes the importance and potential of this project as well as my expertise in this field. I look forward to working together with colleagues Hidde Smit and Tammo Bijmolt on this research.”

For more information please contact Maarten Gijsenberg.