The Impact of Competing Ads on Click Performance in Sponsored Search

Our research examines the impact of competing ads on click performance of an ad in sponsored search. We use a unique data set of 1,267 advertiser keyword pairs with differing ad quality related to 360 keywords from a search engine to evaluate the click performance. We find that competing high-quality ads, appearing above the focal ad, have a lower negative effect on the click performance as compared to competing low-quality ads. We also find...