Distributional Treatment Effects of Content Promotion: Evidence from an ABEMA Field Experiment

TL;DR

This paper presents a large-scale randomized trial at ABEMA showing that top-of-screen content promotions increase user engagement, especially for short content, by analyzing distributional effects on viewing times.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of distributional treatment effects in a real-world streaming platform setting, highlighting the effectiveness of promotions across content types.

Findings

Promotions significantly increase viewing times.

Short content promotions are most effective.

Promotions encourage users to watch subsequent episodes.

Abstract

We examine the impact of top-of-screen promotions on viewing time at ABEMA, a leading video streaming platform in Japan. To this end, we conduct a large-scale randomized controlled trial. Given the non-standard distribution of user viewing times, we estimate distributional treatment effects. Our estimation results document that spotlighting content through these promotions effectively boosts user engagement across diverse content types. Notably, promoting short content proves most effective in that it not only retains users but also motivates them to watch subsequent episodes.