Tv’s Dirty Little Secret: the Negative Effect

Timing online auctions to attract a large number of prospective buyers is important for sellers. This study 16 examines whether online auction sellers need to account for exogenous effects like TV viewing when timing and 17 predicting their auction results. An ongoing debate questions whether TV viewers can spread their attention 18 across multiple devices while watching TV, for example, by concurrently shopping online or posting on social 19 media. Recent research has focused on understanding cross-media effects; however, little attention has been 20 given to TV viewership’s relationship with a very important economic activity, namely participation in online 21 auctions. 22 23 We examine this potential cross-media effect by analyzing the four-year sales history of a German online 24 auction platform and addressing potential endogeneity problems with an instrumental variable approach. We 25 use three different instrumental variables that have different advantages and disadvantages but can, in sum, 26 be used for triangulation as they lead to the same result. The analyses reveal a significant negative cross27 media effect between TV consumption and online auction sales, indicating that TV consumption and online 28 auction sales might compete for the scarce attention of consumers and are thus substitutes for each other rather 29 than complements. 30 1 31