Some suppliers prohibit their distributors from advertising on search engines if the consumer searches for the supplier's brand name. Such restrictions are referred to as “non-brand bidding agreements” (NBBAs). This paper investigates the effect of NBBAs on retail prices in the Dutch hotel sector, where some hotels impose NBBAs on online hotel booking platforms. An NBBA may protect the hotel's own website against competition from hotels on booking platforms because booking platforms cannot target consumers searching for the hotel with a search ad. This may lead to higher prices on the hotel website. However, an NBBA may also generate ad savings, which may lead to lower prices. We use hotel prices from a meta-search site and data on NBBAs from two hotel booking platforms. To correct for unobserved heterogeneity between hotels with and without NBBA, we apply a trajectory balancing approach within a synthetic difference-in-differences framework. Compared to non-NBBA-hotels, NBBA-hotels charge higher prices on their website relative to the price on booking platforms, suggesting a price increase. We identify cases where it is unlikely that consumers benefit from passed-on ad savings.

如果消费者搜索供应商的品牌名称，则某些供应商禁止其分销商在搜索引擎上做广告。此类限制称为“非品牌竞标协议”（NBBA）。本文调查了NBBA对荷兰酒店业零售价格的影响，其中一些酒店在在线酒店预订平台上强加了NBBA。NBBA可以保护酒店自身的网站免受预订平台上酒店的竞争，因为预订平台无法定位使用搜索广告搜索酒店的消费者。这可能会导致酒店网站上的价格上涨。但是，NBBA也可以节省广告，这可能会导致价格降低。我们使用来自元搜索网站的酒店价格以及来自两个酒店预订平台的NBBA数据。为了纠正有和没有NBBA的酒店之间未观察到的异质性，我们在综合差异中应用了轨迹平衡方法。与非NBBA酒店相比，NBBA酒店在其网站上相对于预订平台的价格收取更高的价格，这表明价格上涨了。我们确定了消费者不太可能从转嫁的广告节省中受益的情况。