The ARF Sets the Industry Standard for Research and Data

If you are seriously interested in research and the use of data in media, you need to attend the annual ARF conference which took place this week in New York City. This year, presenters from a range of companies offered ground breaking insights into how media can best be measured across platforms, how creative can be fine-tuned neurologically and how individual platforms such as mobile can enhance measurement techniques and add to our knowledge of how consumes behave.

“Studies have shown that 70% of the impact of a campaign is due to the quality of the creative,” explained Jasper Snyder, EVP ‎Research & Innovation for the ARF. “So as well as showcasing key approaches in measuring cross-platform media consumption, this year's Annual Conference highlights today's leaders in brand-building across new, traditional and reinvented platforms - including insights on the six ways to create great mobile advertising,” he added.

The highlights were summed up by Jed Meyer ‎EVP, Corporate Research, Univision Communications. ”There are many changes in our industry,” he said. ”And we need to rise to the occasion to meet this disruption. We are looking at the data industry to help us adjust and we are seeing the importance of creating relevant content.”

Data is the Center of the Universe But …

Data has become vitally important in all aspects of media from buying to selling. But not all data is relevant and not all methodology is sound. “We are awash in data,” warned ARF CEO, Scott McDonald. “Every member company of the ARF is struggling as to how to manage their data and intellectual assets. We are tentative and hesitant as to how to integrate data sources. There are methodological problems, whether they can deliver usable results,” he added.

Wendy Clarke, CEO, DDB North America explained, “Today’s currency is speed. Are agencies keeping pace? Our approach is to be as dynamic as the marketplace. The days of the fixed model are over.” And that is where data comes in. “Data is not a proxy for decision making,” she noted, “But used correctly data can be used to fuel insights and correct decisions.” She also warned, “Data can kill creativity when used in the wrong way and wrong time, but used in the correct way it can enable creativity.”

Agencies Are Undergoing Transformative Change

“Agencies get it,” stated Clarke. “Our jobs are to manage the present and invent the future. It is incredibly difficult to do that exceptionally well.” According to Clarke, this change has to be holistic, using data at the core and offering the ability to capture consumers' "micro moments, macro stories and mega events."

To meet this transformative change, DDB looked at their client’s consumers in a new way. With State Farm, for example, the messaging went from reactive (State Farm is there to help you when things go wrong) to proactive (State Farm is here to help your life go right). “This was driven by deep research analytics and insights and developed into a category breaking idea,” she noted. 

For McDonalds, “We built an entirely new agency; not for McDonalds but for people who wanted to go to McDonalds. We started with research to unleash creativity. Data science sits physically in the center of the agency,” she explained.

Media Companies Look Toward ROAS

No sector of the industry can afford to remain complacent. Media companies need to keep up with the frenetic pace of change. David Poltrack, Chief Research Officer, CBS, believes that, “Many advertisers are not currently realizing the full potential of their TV advertising campaign.” And to that end, he has been developing the Campaign Performance Audit or CPA in partnership with Nielsen Catalina, to help quantify the return on ad spending (ROAS).

“ROAS is defined as the incremental sales lift divided by the campaign spend,” explained Leslie Wood, Chief Research Officer, Nielsen Catalina Solutions, who added, “We take into account flighting, targeting and seasonality. Recency matters a lot here because advertising closer to the actual purchase is more effective.” As relatively new as ROAS is in measuring media, the method for ascertaining the metric is being tweaked.  Wood continued, “We have recently switched from households reached to how many purchases were reached. This is a big step forward.” 

Today’s Needs Are Also Future Needs

McDonald concluded, “Our industry is rife with conflict and uncertainty which can be ameliorated by neutral unimpeachable research. We have big hairy audacious problems such as fraud in the pipeline. But even if we didn't have these problems, we still need to be able to measure ROI, the impact of an ad on a consumer, engagement and emotional response.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaVillage.com

Get Ready for the ARF Annual Conference on March 20th and 21st 2017

The ARF is holding their annual conference next week that will herald not only the arrival of new President and CEO Dr. Scott McDonald, it will also highlight the continuation and enhancement of three major research initiatives on mobile advertising research and the impact of advertising pod context.

New Leadership

According to the press release, Scott McDonald has held senior research positions at Time Inc., Time Warner, and Conde Nast, working closely with all five of The ARF's constituent groups – media, advertisers, agencies, research companies and ad tech. In a meeting with the press this past week, he explained that he comes to the ARF at “a critically important time for the media industry, partly because technological change has introduced at least a doubling of the number of consumer touchpoints available to marketers - many of which don’t involve media at all.  This has fundamentally changed how we think of ‘audience’ and has made the term more ambiguous and confusing than it was 10 years ago.”

He sees the ARF as focused on a range of issues from “methods for message development and understanding the consumer to highly technical problems of cross platform measurement, advertising effectiveness attribution and ways of integrating big data. These technical topics are very wonky but consume us because they remain unresolved problems for the industry.”

We are entering a complicated world where there are many challenges to the ad-supported media business model. He noted, “Going into the Internet of Things, you are going to have more and more marketing opportunities to connect with consumers in conditions that are devoid of media like on the fitbit, driving in your car, etc. The nature of advertising is changing in response to changes in technology and consumer behavior. Getting a clear view of consumer behavior and advertising impact has never been more important, more difficult or more complex.”

ARF Research Initiatives

As the industry gets more complicated, it is a great time for research. The ARF is continuing on some major research initiatives as well as introducing new ground-breaking work from member companies and suppliers. “One of the studies that will be talked about at the annual meeting,” explained McDonald, “is an effort by the ARF Research team, in collaboration with several of the member companies, to try to quantify the value of specific media context.  How is the performance of an ad affected – for better or worse – by its media environment?  How is it affected by the other ads around it?”

Jasper Snyder, EVP Research and Innovation outlined the continuation of three major research initiatives by noting that, “We have studies on creating effective mobile advertising, optimizing mobile research quality through the impact of emojis in mobile surveys and exploring the ROI impact of different types of context effects.” Previous How Advertising Works studies by the ARF have focused on the ROI of cross-platform advertising, and using neuroscience to understand how brands are built in the brain. “These studies not only quantified the impact of cross-platform advertising for the first time but also established, through neuroscience, the ways in which advertisers can optimize creative to take advantage of cross-platform effects," he continued. 

“Biometric and neuroscience measurement has proven that optimizing creative to a specific platform provides a great opportunity to boost ad effectiveness,” noted Dr. Manuel Garcia-Garcia, SVP, Research and Innovation, who added, “The challenge we face now is how to improve mobile ad creative so they are perceives as valuable and non-disruptive by the users.”

“One of the jobs of the ARF is to lead with quality research that is pivotal to the industry,” concluded McDonald, “Not only in providing quality research but also trying to provide conceptual clarity that makes it easier for all participants – media companies, ad agencies, advertisers and research companies - to be clear about where they are operating and which questions are being addressed.”

This article first appeared in www.MediaBizBloggers.com

Groundbreaking Cross Platform Initiatives

As with other parts of the industry, Research is undergoing transformative change brought on by the fragmentation of audiences and the proliferation of platforms and content choices. For those who are comfortable with change, it is a time to embrace new technologies to supplement traditional research methods. And the ARF Re!Think conference is one place where researchers can learn the new rules,  techniques and measurement solutions to remain on top of their game.

This year, the ARF presented more in the field of advertising dynamics in cross platform measurement. Jasper Snyder, EVP Research and Innovation Cross Platform, ARF, reported five “truths” gained from recent studies:

1.    --   Invest across platforms. Advertising across platforms delivers higher ROI. But almost a third of campaigns are taking place on only one platform.

2   - Combine traditional and digital media. There is a “kicker effect” when TV is added back to digital spending.

3.    -   The kicker effect also applies to millennials, who consume both traditional and digital media.

4.     -  There can be too much frequency in digital. Look to optimize digital by capping frequency.

5.     -  Unified creative is the way forward but be cognizant of the differences in platforms in crafting your message.

Cross platform measurement continues to be the Holy Grail for advertisers and media companies. Here are some highlights from the conference:

Advertising - CBS’s New ROI Paradigm

David Poltrack, CRO, CBS and President of CBS VISION, presented new research in conjunction with Leslie Wood, CRO, Nielsen Catalina Solutions in the area of purchase driven planning. “We are looking at the concept of ROI at CBS,” David explained, “and worked closely with Nielsen Catalina to find the right metrics and tools to assess the value of TV and cross platform advertising. We found a new planning paradigm called purchase driven planning to understand how media works and compare alternatives before they run. The result is incremental sales at the center of the ad run.”

Leslie spearheaded the study using as a foundation the data collected through Nielsen Catalina that combined the exposure of advertising to persons within households. She tracked transactional behavior across time to ascertain which people see what ads and how that changes their buying behavior. Leslie explained, “We monitored their exposure to the ad before they go to the store compared to what happened before they entered the store. This helps us ascertain what moved them to purchase events and when advertising could have an effect.” In this way, David and Leslie can estimate future behaviors against the recency of the advertising message.

Measurement - Nielsen Total Audience

Nielsen’s President of Product Leadership, Megan Clarken, presented Nielsen Total Audience, cross platform measurement. “Media consumption continues to rise,” she noted, “We spend over 64 hours a week on media with devices having profound effect.” While the industry measures television advertising using ratings, the combination of C3 / C7, time shifting behaviors, VOD and other device usage prevents the use of ratings in a cross platform setting.  “Total Audience is seeking to address that problem” she concluded.

According to Megan, Total Audience offers:
1. Measurement of audience usage and exposure across platforms.

2. Comparable measurement across the usage grid between linear and digital.
3. Measurement of ads separate and distinctive from other content
4. Creation of an all-inclusive ratings service focused around video, audio and text.

Conclusion

These are two of the many cross platform data initiatives presented at this year’s ARF Re!Think.  Other presentations included work in neuroscience to understand the role of creative; machine learning to clean up spam, help in image labeling and facilitate unrelated category search; and parsing the unique attributes of each platform to optimize consumer experiences. We are only scratching the surface of cross platform consumer behavior understanding. Enjoy the journey of discovery!

This article first appeared in www.Mediapost.com