ABOUT THE Sequent Accelerator Award
The Sequent Accelerator Award honors breakthrough innovations in marketing analytics, including advancements in AI, modeling, metrics, data, and insight delivery, that have driven measurable brand impact and advanced the field within the past five years.
The inaugural winners from Adelaide and Microsoft represent work that validates marketing research’s rigor and necessity while also advancing the industry forward with technical advancements and new approaches. It is our honor to bestow the leaders behind the work the first-ever Sequent Accelerator Award and showcase their achievements.
ADELAIDE – Innovation Summary
The Sequent Accelerator Award honors solutions that combine technical advancement with meaningful business impact. Perry Papadopoulos’ work on Adelaide’s AU metric delivers on both fronts:
Technical advancement: AU is a predictive, omnichannel, outcome-aligned quality score that overcomes the long-standing limitations of legacy metrics.
Business impact: AU has delivered documented, repeatable gains in brand lift, efficiency, and waste reduction—reshaping how advertisers invest, publishers monetize inventory, and platforms enable trading.
Through Perry’s leadership, AU has evolved from a breakthrough innovation into a trusted, widely adopted standard. His work has advanced the field of marketing analytics while delivering a practical tool that improves outcomes across the ecosystem and fosters a healthier, outcome-driven marketplace that rewards high-quality advertising experiences.
| About the Honoree Perry Papadopoulos is a Co-Founder and VP of Product and Engineering at Adelaide, the industry leader in attention-based media quality measurement. Before creating the technology behind Adelaide, Perry spearheaded the development of Parsec’s platform, establishing the industry’s first duration-based media marketplace. He oversaw the production of thousands of rich media advertising creatives and led the development of several innovative products and services. Prior to his decade-long career in media, Perry was a key member of the founding team at an eyewear-focused e-commerce startup, where he built a platform for licensed eyewear brands and managed lifestyle and product creative production. Additionally, Perry has experience with a major European transit management platform, where he developed real-time applications and led the production of trial-legal visual presentations. Perry holds a Bachelor of Arts in Fine Arts from Rice University. Read more about Perry’s work. |
MICROSOFT – Innovation Summary
Microsoft has transformed how it understands customers by developing AI-powered Audience Models trained on over 100,000 proprietary customer data points. These models simulate real audience responses with 90% accuracy, generating insights in minutes rather than weeks. This enables marketers to test and refine campaigns, messages, and product features rapidly and at scale—unlocking previously inaccessible insights into customer preferences and trade-offs. As a result, Microsoft has saved over $7 million annually, improved targeting precision, and significantly accelerated go-to-market strategies. This leading innovation signals there is still so many places to grow and develop in the future of analytics and modeling.
About the Honorees
| . Romani Patel is a Director of Data Science at Microsoft and leads strategic initiatives of scaling Gen AI application in marketing. She built and scaled Microsoft’s proprietary AI Messaging Assistant trained on 100,000+ customer voice data points that has transformed the way marketing gets done. Other than AI, she has also built Microsoft’s 1st party customer feedback platform called HYper Targeted (HYT) Research Platform, which leverages real time behavior metrics (usage and/or spend metrics) to engage with customers, gather customer attitudes and then join attitudes with behavior telemetry to form holistic insights. By utilizing a combination of AI, quantitative and qualitative methods along with advanced data science and machine learning models, Romani’s work supports product strategies, informs advertising investments, and drives customer growth initiatives. Romani holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in engineering, as well as an MBA in Marketing. Read more about Romani’s work. |
|
Kate WeymerDirector of Data Science |
. Kate Weymer is Director of Data Science at Microsoft, leading the AI and Data Science Tools team within Research + Insights. She specializes in applying explainable AI and machine learning to marketing and business strategy, developing agentic workflows and advanced analytics that integrate customer voice and competitive telemetry with traditional data sources. Previously, Kate managed analytics programs at Levi Strauss & Co. and Microsoft, delivering insights on marketing effectiveness for global brands. Originally from Kailua, Hawaii, she now lives in Seattle with her husband and two sons. Read more about Kate’s work. |
| . Robert Graves, Senior Director of Data Management and Science for Microsoft Research & Insights, has spent almost 20 years helping companies better understand customers. At Microsoft, Robert leads a full-stack data science team that looks across consumer and commercial landscapes. The team unlocks the value in data from across the company, decoding customer perceptions and behaviors to help Microsoft create more customer-centric products and meaningful advertising. The team is bringing new AI Tools to researchers and marketers to drive strategic decision making for Brand/Marketing ROI and Lifetime Value initiatives. Read more about Robert’s work. |
Have Questions?
Please contact Events Director Sara Serpe at sara@thearf.org.