[andrenotgiant]

Link to the actual research paper: http://conference.nber.org/confer/2013/EoDs13/Tadelis.pdf

(preliminary paper published and presented at the March 8 NBER "Economics of Digitization" Conference)

As a side note, you know an article (reuters) is dumbed-down linkbait when they don't even bother linking to the actual study they are referencing.

[qompiler]

> Results show that brand-keyword ads have no short-term benefits, and that returns from all other keywords are a fraction of conventional estimates.

The article on reuters completely ignores the keyword 'short-term'. Furthermore, if eBay had an actually viable competitor it would be fighting for those ads with every penny.