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Standard models of advertising‐financed media assume consumers patronise a single‐media platform, precluding effective competition for advertisers. Such competition ensues if consumers multi‐home. The principle of incremental pricing implies that multi‐homing consumers are less valuable to platforms. Then entry of new platforms decreases advertisement prices, while a merger increases them, and advertisement‐financed platforms may suffer if a public broadcaster carries advertisements. Platforms may bias content against multi‐homing consumers, especially if consumers highly value overlapping content and/or second impressions have low value.

We examine Norwegian gasoline pump prices using daily station‐specific observations from 2003 to 2006. The four big gasoline companies use a vertical restraint that is adopted industry‐wide (labeled price support). This moves price control from the hands of independent retailers into the hands of the headquarters. Retail gasoline prices follow a fixed weekly pattern, where we observe de facto simultaneous decision‐making by the headquarters (without knowledge of their rivals’ prices) when every Monday around noon they decide to increase pump prices to the same level. The price level on Mondays corresponds to the recommended prices published by the headquarters of the gasoline companies.

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