3.1.2 More information In addition to the effect that more information may have on the cost of capital, it may also have other benefits for creators. For example, in the hybrid context where funders are also able to obtain early access to the product, crowdfunding serves as a particularly informative type of marketing research, which is often modeled as reducing the variance of post-launch demand (Lauga and Ofek, 2009). Like marketing research, crowdfunding that allows pre-buying provides an informative signal of post-launch demand. Unlike most marketing research, crowdfunding can include advanced selling, which provides incentive- compatible demand signals, thereby substantially increasing the quality of the signal (Ding, 2007). Thus, crowdfunding reduces the noise associated with assessing demand prior to the launch of a fundamentally new product. This can lead to an increase in the number of products launched and to a higher rate of success among launched products (Lauga and Ofek, 2009)