Is Unbiased Media Better? Sequential Randomless Game 2 players Advertiser Advertise: Get traffic from media’s tweet Forfeit: No traffic Media Pro: Favorable news of supported agenda Neutral: Balanced news reporting Contra: Criticizing opposing views Overhyped: Anecdotes and variety of popular news Game Tree Simulated for 4 moves (64 leaves)

1. Biased Media
Hendy Irawan - 23214344
Advanced Matematics EL5000 / Game Theory

2. Is Unbiased Media Better?

3. Game, Players & Strategies
› Sequential Perfect-Information Randomless Game
› 2 players
– Advertiser
› Advertise: Get traffic from media’s tweet
› Forfeit: No traffic
– Media
› Pro: Favorable news of supported agenda
› Neutral: Balanced news reporting
› Contra: Criticizing opposing views
› Overhyped: Anecdotes and variety of popular news
› Game Tree Simulated for 4 moves (64 leaves)

4. Outcomes for Advertiser
› Based on number of
Retweets of Media’s topic
› Statistics from
@dakwatuna
› If Advertiser chooses
Forfeit then: 0 RTs
› If chooses Advertise, based
on Media’s topic:
– Pro: 10 RTs
– Neutral: 4 RTs
– Contra: 70 RTs
– Overhyped: 110 RTs

5. Outcomes for Media
› Based on Click-Through Rate which determines
payout to the media company
– Statistics from: http://www.quora.com/What-is-
the-average-CTR-on-Facebook-Ads
› Payoff formula:
CTR × number of Retweets
› If 0 “Advertise” moves: 0%
› If 1 “Advertise” move:
– Pro: 0.02%
– Neutral: 0.03%
– Contra: 0.08%
– Overhyped: 0.06%
› If 2 “Advertise” moves, pick best CTR from:
(viral effect)
– Pro: 0.16%
– Neutral: 0.11%
– Contra: 0.09%
– Overhyped: 0.07%

6. Payoff Matrix: Moves 1 & 2

7. Payoff Matrix: Moves 3 & 4

8. Game Tree
Advertiser moves first

9. Game Tree: Move A
(Advertiser Advertises)

10. Game Tree: Move F
(Advertiser Forfeits)

11. Maximins
ADVERTISER MEDIA
› Strategy _O_P and _P_O
maximizes minimum payoff
› Maximized minimum payoff is 0
› Strategy A_A_ maximizes
minimum payoff
› Maximized minimum payoff is 8
(ANAN)

12. Dominations
ADVERTISER MEDIA
› Moves A_A_ strongly
dominates other strategies
› Moves _O_P and _P_O
dominates other strategies

13. Pure Nash Equilibrium
› Single Pure Nash Equilibrium is moves AOAP (120, 1920)

14. Conclusion
› Media bias is a factor in success of advertiser’s click-
through rates
› Since advertiser cannot directly control media, the best
move is to advertise
– If ad performance is not satisfactory, advertise can switch to
different media outlet, but still advertise
› When the game is played sequentially, the viral effect of
news article affects the total click-through rates
– It’s preferable to advertise multiple times in a single media outlet
than switching media outlets rapidly

15. References
› Viola Chen. Is Media Bias Bad? UCLA. 2007.
http://chenv.bol.ucla.edu/ChenV_Bias.pdf
› Gentzkow, Matthew, and Jesse Shapiro. Media bias and
reputation. No. w11664. National Bureau of Economic
Research, 2005.
› http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-average-CTR-on-
Facebook-Ads