ارزیابی آثار رفاهی تبلیغات دیجیتال هدفمند در بازار کالاهای مصرفی: یک الگوی اطلاعات‌محور از رسانه–فراغت و سیاست بهینه

Introduction: This study examines the welfare and economic effects of traditional and targeted digital advertising within Iran’s consumer goods market, focusing on the dairy sector as a representative case. Over the past decade, the expansion of digital media platforms has reshaped the dynamics of competition and consumer engagement. Traditional advertising through television, radio, and billboards, while still influential, suffers from inefficiencies such as the inability to reach relevant audiences and the wastage of advertising expenditure on consumers without actual purchasing intent. In contrast, targeted digital advertising allows companies to tailor their marketing messages to specific audience segments, leveraging user data and behavioral patterns to increase effectiveness. Despite this global transformation, empirical evidence in developing economies such as Iran remains limited, especially concerning how digital advertising affects market competition, pricing behavior, and consumer welfare. The present research seeks to fill this gap by using an information-based model to assess how advertising strategies influence price dispersion, welfare outcomes, and allocative efficiency in the market. The motivation for this study stems from both theoretical and practical needs: theoretically, it contributes to understanding how information asymmetry in advertising affects market equilibrium; practically, it offers insight for policymakers and industry leaders in designing efficient and welfare-improving communication strategies. The objective is therefore to compare the outcomes of traditional and digital advertising within a calibrated model that reflects the real structure of Iran’s dairy industry and to design an optimal policy combination capable of correcting informational inefficiencies.

Methodology: The methodology adopted in this research follows a six-step structure grounded in Greenwood et al.’s (2025) information-based modeling framework. In the first step, the basic structure of the market was formulated, considering two consumer groups—university-educated and non-educated individuals—each with different income levels, leisure preferences, and access to advertisements. Firms were assumed to freely enter the market and simultaneously choose product prices and advertising intensity. In the second step, the competitive equilibrium under traditional, non-targeted advertising was derived analytically. In this case, all consumers receive random messages, leading to heterogeneity in information and the emergence of a “price gap” where identical goods are sold at different prices due to uneven information distribution. In the third step, the mechanism of income-based digital targeting was incorporated into the model. Digital ads were directed mainly toward consumers with real purchasing capacity, reducing waste and improving targeting accuracy. The fourth step involved constructing a hybrid model that integrates both traditional and digital advertising channels, better reflecting current market realities. This hybrid equilibrium captures the joint effects of both channels on price dispersion, consumer utility, and leisure–media interaction. In the fifth step, the study simulated a second-best policy scenario that combines a subsidy for media–leisure provision—designed to offset its social under-supply—with a corrective tax on inefficient, non-targeted advertising. This policy aims to align firm incentives with social welfare. Finally, the model was calibrated using real data from five leading Iranian dairy brands (Kalleh, Pegah, Mihan, Rāmak, and Sabah). Data on production costs, retail prices, sales volumes, advertising budgets (segmented by traditional and digital media), and consumption patterns were collected from official reports, field surveys )random sampling in Tehran city) and national statistics for years of 2024. The market’s total annual milk consumption (approximately three billion liters) and average retail price (49,000 IRR per liter) served as key calibration benchmarks.

Discussion and Results: The results of the model calibration provide robust quantitative evidence of the advantages of digital targeted advertising. The targeting precision of advertising campaigns increased significantly from 0.42 to 0.72 after incorporating digital targeting, meaning that about 70% of ads reached consumers with actual purchasing power. This improvement in precision reduced price dispersion across the market by nearly 15%, narrowing the price gaps among competing brands and fostering a more competitive equilibrium. Furthermore, the media–leisure index, representing the interaction between information exposure and leisure satisfaction, rose by 23%, particularly among non-university consumers who spend more time-consuming media content. The average consumer welfare, measured by equivalent variation, increased by 46,000 IRR per person annually. This welfare gain stemmed mainly from lower average prices (a reduction of about 0.5 thousand IRR per liter) and greater transparency in price information. Brand-level analysis revealed that major producers such as Berand 1 and 3 experienced the greatest welfare and sales improvements, with a 2–2.5% increase in annual sales and a 17–18% decrease in price variance. Smaller brands like Brand 4 and 5 also benefited, though to a lesser extent, showing a 1–1.5% increase in sales and a 13–14% improvement in price alignment. The hybrid system, in which both advertising modes coexist, proved to be the most effective configuration, combining broad reach with high precision. Policy simulations confirmed that implementing a media–leisure subsidy of 35,000 IRR per person per year and a 12% tax on inefficient traditional advertising corrected information-related inefficiencies without causing fiscal imbalance. After this intervention, the share of digital advertising in total industry expenditure rose from 34% to 41%, while consumer welfare continued to improve.

Conclusion: The findings lead to several important conclusions. First, targeted digital advertising substantially enhances market efficiency by improving information symmetry between producers and consumers, reducing waste in advertising expenditure, and strengthening price competition. Second, the combination of media–leisure subsidies and corrective taxation provide an effective policy mechanism to promote socially optimal advertising behavior while maintaining budget neutrality. Third, the results suggest that digital advertising contributes to both economic and social welfare—not only through lower prices and increased competition but also by enriching consumers’ media experiences and overall satisfaction. The study recommends that policymakers in Iran’s consumer industries adopt incentive-based rather than restrictive approaches to advertising regulation. Instead of limiting advertising activity, the focus should be on encouraging firms to use data-driven, evidence-based targeting techniques that increase transparency and accountability. From an industrial perspective, companies should invest in data analytics, consumer segmentation, and AI-driven campaign optimization to make their marketing strategies more efficient. For smaller firms, collaboration with professional digital marketing agencies can help them access data resources and compete more effectively.