Recognizing Women in Research. Interview with ARF Erwin Ephron Winner, Alice Sylvester

In the world of research, women’s contributions are being recognized. This year, Alice Sylvester, one of the founding partners of Sequent Partners, has been recognized by the ARF for their prestigious Erwin Ephron Award. She is the second woman in its history to win it.

Sylvester is a research veteran. “I have spent my career in various roles across media research (including measurement and accountability), brand research (looking at valuation and measurement) and account planning (guiding insights and strategy for brands’ creative messaging),” she noted. Her work spanned advertising at Tatham-Laird & Kudner to J. Walter Thompson, Leo Burnett, Young & Rubicam and FCB to name a few. “I was also Chairman of The Advertising Research Foundation board, and co-wrote a book. And of course, I am currently a partner at Sequent Partners with Jim Spaeth, where I have worked on a variety of ROI initiatives, new media metrics developments and cross-media measurement for over 10 years,” she added.

Charlene Weisler: Why do you think you won the award - what work especially stood out?

Alice Sylvester: That’s very hard to say. First of all, I’m funny and people laugh at my jokes. I’m also a little brave and not afraid to ask questions to make sure I get it. But in all seriousness, like many others, I have been involved in some of the most challenging measurement issues the industry has faced (how advertising works, single source data, test marketing, marketing mix models/attribution, audience measurement, changing television measurement – STB, ACR), and now identity resolution, data quality, validation and activation. The industry has changed so very much, and become far more complex than ever. Throughout my career, I’ve played the role of translator – taking exceeding technical and complicated stuff and making it consumable by busy people who can’t, and don’t want to, spend the day deciphering what the science is trying to tell them.

Weisler: What is the most pressing issue in research today?

Sylvester: Nailing campaign reach and frequency, and controlling frequency. A lot of energy will be focused around these issues for a while.

Weisler: Is there a role for research in a media world of data?

Sylvester: Hard to separate the two. It’s all the same thing – using data and insights to plan and optimize media. Both will exist and have specific roles. Traditionally, research was about reliable, replicable insights and findings, standards, best practices, quality. And data was all about taming a firehose of raw anonymous data and turning it into something that looks like what we think the answer is. But you can’t have a media operation without research or without data. They live alongside each other in perfect harmony. Fueling different applications at times, having different purposes.

Weisler: What is the future of research?

Sylvester: The future promises to be a robust cacophony of experimentation and innovation and data-dependent.

Weisler: Tell me more about your work in attribution at Sequent Partners.

Sylvester: We’ve created provider guides to help people know who the main providers of attribution services are and how they distinguish their offerings and have shared methods and nitty gritty things about samples, panels, how they count audiences, data sources, validation approaches, etc. We’ve also done experiments for CIMM where we evaluated the accuracy of television inputs into attribution and provided some best practices and questions to ask. We’ve also performed training and shared best practices for attribution and marketing mix modeling for a large number of media, like OOH, Cinema, OLV, and we’ve run RFPs for marketers looking for new providers.

Weisler: Will we ever get to full attribution?

Sylvester:  Yes, one way or another. The promise of event-level, cross-media performance measurement and understanding the impact of touchpoints on the consumer journey is too strong to give up on because it’s hard. We’ll get there.

Weisler: How has the industry has changed over course of your career?

Sylvester: Significantly. We don’t drink at lunch anymore. And cable was just starting! That’s a long time ago. Now, there are more data scientists in the business than ever. We talk about outcomes and accountability, not just straight-up audience delivery. We used to deal with syndicated data sources expressly designed for measurement purposes. Also, today, people are much more open to a wide variety of data sources and solutions. They don’t need perfection – they need good enough in just the right time to impact decisions. That’s a big difference.

Weisler: What direction is the industry heading in?

Sylvester: The industry is hurling itself forward, in all directions, including forward and backwards.

Weisler: What gaps exist, what do we need to do?

Sylvester: We need a lot, as there is always room for best practices and careful consideration of whether data and research findings conform to the world as we know it, and for “show me how you know that” validation. We need measures of quality in placement and content. We need to know how much context and consumer emotion factor into attention and response to content and advertising. We need to know when we’ve hit the limits of commercial load (the number of breaks and the number of commercials) and we need to make sure fix “ad collision” – sending the same ad to the same person over and over.

We need to close the gulf between data scientists and media research/advertising people. We need to close the diversity gap and go into the high schools and encourage people to participate in the analytics and media industry. We need to continue making it a great place for women.

Weisler: Where do you see the media landscape three years from now?

Sylvester: Maybe more consolidation – streaming services, analytics providers, identity providers, data services – increased comfort with a multitude of data sources rather than reliance on one for all audience and measurement needs. Some solutions to privacy legislations will be tested – some might work by then.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

 

Finding Solutions at the Attribution Accelerator Conference

The perfect attribution model, in my opinion, is a chimera. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t hold out hope for an industry multi-touch attribution model that, even if not perfect, is considered pretty good. This past week, executives from data and analytics companies to advertisers and content providers met to exchange pretty good ideas at the Attribution Accelerator Conference in NYC.

The conference strove to present attribution solutions for marketing measurement.  “Attribution is the hot spot,” stated Alice Sylvester, Partner, Sequent Partners, who added, “The development of a unified approach is taking place. We are now focusing on data and data quality and have a more practical, more analytical orientation this year.” But the path to a generally accepted attribution model may be further off than we think because of a fear of change in the industry which has relied on Mixed Media Models for decades and the walled gardens of data that have increasingly siloed and segmented data applicability.

Here are some takeaways from the Attribution Accelerator conference:

Challenges to Attribution

There are many reasons why it has taken so long for attribution to start to gain traction in the industry according to John Leeman, former CEO of Fresh Direct. Companies fear choosing the right dataset, upending the current business model or changing the decision set of marketers which results in less creative control and second guessing of their media choices.  And, once having instituted an attribution model, what if it’s wrong? “It doesn't have to be perfectly accurate to be valuable,” he stated.

But moving towards a prove-able attribution model is pivotal in this new media world of ever increasing consumer touchpoints that make the journey to purchase a meandering minefield. “Get over your fear- trust your gut, imagine, realize and just do it,” he concluded.

Finding Solutions for Advertisers

Many companies are tackling multi touch attribution head-on, striving for a real time model that might even incorporate media mix modeling, drive minute by minute allocation decisions and increase advertising agility. But there are many, many considerations that may vary by brand and by company.

Charlie Hilton, AVP Advanced Analytics for AT&T, noted that her company has been, “doing attribution for nine years. We are now shifting gears to true attribution and near real time optimization.” Her attribution methodology needs to take into account how all of the different media tactics interact with each other, how to quantify the precise combination of different touch points along the way and if advertising for one product impacts other products.

Kristina Kaganer, Director of Global Market Strategy, Coty, has product lines that span from discount to high end.  “Fighting for shelf space at Walmart involves different competition than when you are competing at Sephora,” she noted. Scalable attribution is her company’s goal and that requires the collection and control of pertinent data, technology that functions on the local level (which can differ depending on locality), the standardization of processes that can cross local markets, data storage and analytics. 

Finding Solutions for Media Companies

There are five keys to driving sales, according to David Poltrack, CBS Corporation Chief Research Officer and President, CBS Vision and they are Reach, Targeting, Recency, Creative and Context. “Few TV campaigns are tapping the full potential of TV,” he asserted. From untested creative, a disregard to context, a cost efficiency rather than a reach orientation and little attention paid to recency, advertisers are not maximizing the true value of television in a buy. “Digital is not going to replace TV,” he stated. “Advertisers and marketers must focus on getting TV right. TV is a reach medium and a combination of TV and digital is important. Understanding how to get that combination right is what attribution is all about,” he added.

Summarizing the results of a study with CBS, Leslie Wood, Chief Research Officer, Nielsen Catalina Solutions noted that the fundamentals for advertising are as follows: Creative is the most Important factor, although media is playing an increasingly larger role. Reach is critical because only consumers who are reached can respond. Targeting has to focus on buyers of the product or service and Recency is vital because the value of exposure decays over time.

Finding Solutions for Measurement and Data Companies

Nielsen has always owned its own data. But in a world of first party data and big datasets, Nielsen is becoming more flexible and philosophical in how they acquire data and partner with other companies in the space. Matthew Krepsik, Global Head of Analytics for Nielsen, spoke of his company’s journey working across walled gardens. “We have the algorithm. We are good at the math. But it is not about building a better algorithm. The most important thing we can do now is to seek out better data.”

It is not a simple journey because, he noted, “every touch point can drive conversion. Shoppers are increasingly changing their behavior. They are becoming omni-channel digital natives and engaging brands directly.” Different products have very different purchasing cycles which make them multi-dimensional, multi-faceted and difficult for attribution. Nielsen is striving to tackle the de-duplication of devices so as to better analyze ROI, data hygiene and privacy compliance so as to insure an attribution model that better allocates marketing dollars

Attribution “is an elusive quest,” he concluded.  So too for us all.

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com
 

Accelerating Attribution

Attribution, according to the CIMM Lexicon is “The reason that a prospective customer does what they do. More specifically, why they came to the site, entered the funnel, and performed a given action. (Source: Mediamath)” Accurate attribution would enable a marketer to get the correctly measured sequencing of consumer initiated events that influenced that consumer’s behavior. It is not an easy task.

CIMM recently hosted an attribution accelerator conference where speakers from such companies as Turner, CIMM, Nielsen, comScore, Time Inc., J&J, Citibank, Sequent Partners, AOL, Rubicon, Google, TubeMogul, Verizon and Samba TV presented their views on attribution. Where is attribution research today? How can we spur development to ensure existing models can keep up with demand as attribution moves beyond digital?

I sat down with Jim Spaeth, and Alice Sylvester, both Partners at Sequent Partners and asked them the following questions:

Charlene Weisler:  Please define attribution and the best forms of attribution 

Alice Sylvester: Attribution is the study of individual media tactics’ contribution to sales. The best forms of attribution do not use a priori models that pre-suppose the solution (first click, last click, W, U etc.).  The best forms of attribution incorporate other elements besides digital, at the household level. 

Charlene Weisler:  Tell me what your company is doing to track and measure attribution. 

Alice Sylvester: We have a number of projects going on – notably the Attribution Accelerator event, which will quicken the pace of innovation, fortify the science and galvanize the industry toward new attribution solutions. We also have a CIMM study of Attribution that will assess best practices and areas of improvement in cross-platform attribution.

Charlene Weisler:  Which existing models are doing the best job of attribution? 

Jim Spaeth: We don’t know — we will be looking to identify a best practice over the course of the next few days — we do know, however, that many of the existing models are insufficient given that they need to: reflect the fact that media has diminishing returns and adstock effects, that media has short and long term effects, that the media have interactions among them, that there is an effect of the brand (baseline), different responses by consumer segments and past purchasing behavior, and that different ads generate different responses. 

Alice Sylvester: The best job of attribution will address these issues.  Oh and then there is the issue of walled gardens and a significant portion of data from Google and FB not being generally available. 

Charlene Weisler:  How can you ensure that existing models keep up and move beyond digital. 

Alice Sylvester: The marketplace will definitely determine winners and losers – skepticism is creeping in among marketers who have had some experience with attribution.  

Jim Spaeth: There is a huge issue as to how to impute non-digital events on a digital data stream.

Alice Sylvester: There are issues with validation and the veracity of A/B test that have to be addressed in order to increase confidence in attribution.  And there are significant issues in device matching at the household which can be a source of significant error and in data matching across big datasets.  

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com

Q&A with Alice Sylvester - Media Behavior Institute

Alice Sylvester started her career in ad agencies before joining Media Behavior Institute as COO. Her deep knowledge of research well prepares her for the creative qual / quant application of MBI’s TouchPoints study. In this interview, Alice talks about TouchPoints, how one measures emotions and the range of emotions that are measureable, agency research applications and some insights into how the media landscape will evolve over the next few years.  

The four videos of the interview are as follows:

Subject                                                 Length (in minutes)

Background                                                  (3:04)

USA TouchPoints                                        (10:03)

Measurements Emotions                             (10:45)

Agencies and Predictions                             (6:01)

Charlene Weisler interviews Media Behavior Institute's Alice Sylvester who talks about her background in this 3:04 minute video:

Alice Sylvester discusses her company's measurement system USA Touchpoints and how it can quantify emotions with Charlene Weisler in this 10:03 minute video:




Charlene Weisler interviews Media Behavior Institute's Alice Sylvester who continues the discussion about measuring emotions through USA Touchpoints, in this 10:45 minute video:


In this final 6:01 minute video, Alice Sylvester shares her insights into agencies and the future landscape of media with interviewer Charlene Weisler;