AUDIENCExSCIENCE 2026

Overview

ARF’s annual AUDIENCExSCIENCE conference will showcase the most urgent challenges and recent breakthroughs in audience measurement. This year, we examine the rapidly changing intersection of AI, marketing, media, and consumer insights. As AI shifts research workflows, alters measurement systems, and changes consumer behavior, industry leaders will share new insights on how audience measurement is adapting to rapid change. We’ll explore how AI-driven search is transforming discovery and trust, the latest evidence in attention science, and modern frameworks for engaging diverse audiences with cultural sensitivity. Sessions will cover the most challenging video measurement questions across CTV, linear, and streaming; examine the evolving role of legacy media in a fragmented ecosystem; and improve influencer strategies through better alignment of content, audience, and outcomes. We’ll also showcase advanced, privacy-centric approaches to audience definition and targeting as AI transforms media, advertising workflows, and risk management. Bringing together the world’s leading researchers, practitioners, and innovators, AUDIENCExSCIENCE offers insights, tools, and evidence that will shape the future of marketing, media, and measurement. AUDIENCExSCIENCE 2026 will be held March 18-19 at People Inc., 225 Liberty St., NYC.

Call for Content - Now Open

2026 Call for content topic descriptions:

AI in Marketing & Research: Emerging Applications, Evidence, and Implications
AI is transforming how researchers generate insights, simulate behavior, and evaluate marketing performance. From large language models and synthetic respondents to AI-enhanced segmentation and predictive analytics, new tools are reshaping methodologies at scale. How is AI being integrated into the research workflow? What have we learned about its validity and reliability? What are the implications for research design, interpretation, and decision-making in an increasingly automated landscape? What strategies and tools are you using to combat deepfakes and ensure the authenticity and transparency of AI-generated content? What is the latest research on systems to verify tamper-proof content provenance, such as watermarking and C2PA? As consumers encounter more fake photos and videos—whether of cute kids and pets or otherwise—how does this influence their perception of other photos and videos?

Balancing Privacy with Personalization in the Age of Personal AI
As AI agents become personal assistants, advocates, and gatekeepers for millions, the challenge of balancing privacy with personalization grows more complex. When each person’s AI is trained to protect their data and provide highly relevant experiences, the tradeoffs between transparency, trust, and personalized engagement become more pronounced. We welcome research, case studies, and innovations that explore:

How AI agents can provide personalized value while respecting privacy boundaries
Frameworks for data consent, control, and ethical use in human–AI interactions
Emerging technical and policy strategies to maintain user control while facilitating large-scale personalization

AI Search and the Battle for Trust
Research on the future of search is crucial as AI shifts results from links to text answers. What does this mean for publisher revenue, consumers’ ability to distinguish sponsored from organic content, and broader trust in both advertising and AI? These changes could influence how consumers find brands, how effectiveness is measured, and how advertising strategies are developed—raising urgent questions for marketers and researchers alike. We invite you to submit work exploring these shifts, their measurement challenges, and their implications for the future of marketing and media.

Advancing the Science and Business of Attention
Attention metrics have rapidly advanced, yet industry discussions often revisit familiar topics. How are emerging technologies like AI-driven eye-tracking, AR/VR, and predictive biometrics changing our understanding of “attention”? Where is the strongest (or weakest) empirical evidence linking attention metrics to real-world outcomes such as increased revenue, customer retention, or brand loyalty? How have marketers and media buyers integrated attention-based metrics into daily planning, buying, and optimization—and what lessons, positive or negative, have been learned? Are there significant limitations or blind spots in current attention measurement methods, and what new frameworks or additional metrics could be developed?

Evolving Strategies for Reaching Diverse Audiences
Marketing to diverse audiences now requires more than just demographic segmentation—it involves cultural fluency, contextual awareness, and understanding how identity, values, and media behaviors intersect. What are the best practices for inclusive marketing in an era of rising sociopolitical polarization? How are brands managing differences not only in race, ethnicity, and gender but also in ideology, geography, and media ecosystems? What frameworks help balance authenticity, representation, and risk in this increasingly complex landscape?

The Current State of Video Measurement

Video measurement faces significant challenges, especially as we attempt to unify Connected TV (CTV), linear TV, and streaming platforms into a single ecosystem. The viability of “deterministic” identity matching systems is being undermined by changing privacy rules, which lead to a greater reliance on privacy-first “probabilistic” methods. What are the concerns about their accuracy and scalability, especially as video consumption becomes ever more fragmented? Partnerships between major data owners and independent measurement firms signal the possibility of a more comprehensive, cross-platform view of fragmented audiences, but do the numbers add up? What are the most promising paths forward for hybrid methodologies?

The Role of Legacy Media in Today’s Multi-Media World

Traditional media continues to complement digital and on-demand platforms rather than replacing them. OOH media still find their way into various parts of consumers’ lives, but is measurement keeping pace? As “drive time” radio evolves and podcasts grow in popularity, how is our understanding of radio’s role in advertising changing? The rise of in-app and in-game ads challenges measurement; how should their impact be evaluated? Linear TV remains a key component of brand strategies, but combining linear TV with digital platforms complicates audience measurement. How can cross-platform reach be most accurately captured? What new tools or strategies will help decode interactions between traditional and emerging media for better media planning?

Influencer Strategy: Aligning Content, Audience, and Goals
As influencer marketing continues to grow in scale and complexity, the main challenge is understanding its role in planning and maximizing audience reach. How can brands evaluate which influencers best match campaign objectives, target audiences, and media mix? How do different platforms, formats, and audience overlaps affect overall effectiveness? We invite you to submit work that advances the planning, assessment, and strategic integration of influencers into the marketing mix.

Brand Safety and Content Adjacency

For brand safety, what effective data-driven approaches go beyond traditional blocklists and manual monitoring? How can natural language processing (NLP), sentiment analysis, and machine learning models be used to classify content contextually and detect subtle nuances that may affect brand perception? Share methods for real-time brand safety monitoring across programmatic and social media channels, emphasizing the integration of proprietary data with third-party verification tools. What are the best practices for quantifying brand risk exposure and balancing scale with safety? How can these insights be operationalized to improve media buying strategies and build client trust in an evolving digital landscape? How are you addressing brand safety risks and measurement challenges from generative AI, deepfakes, synthetic content, and misinformation?

How to Submit

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Overview

We’ll explore how AI-driven search is transforming discovery and trust, the latest evidence in attention science, and modern frameworks for engaging diverse audiences with cultural sensitivity. Sessions will cover the most challenging video measurement questions across CTV, linear, and streaming; examine the evolving role of legacy media in a fragmented ecosystem; and improve influencer strategies through better alignment of content, audience, and outcomes. We’ll also showcase advanced, privacy-centric approaches to audience definition and targeting as AI transforms media, advertising workflows, and risk management.

Bringing together the world’s leading researchers, practitioners, and innovators, AUDIENCExSCIENCE offers insights, tools, and evidence that will shape the future of marketing, media, and measurement.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

The Great AI Transformation of 2026
Shelly Palmer will deliver a fast-paced briefing on the Great AI Transformation of 2026 for media and marketing leaders. He will outline rapid shifts in AI capability, product cycles, and deployment patterns, and he will show how agentic systems will browse, compare, negotiate, and purchase. He will explain how answer engines reshape discovery and measurement and provide practical playbooks for content and data. The session will cover designing for agents as buyers, managing metadata and offers in collapsed funnels, and applying workable model practices and governance. You will leave with clear takeaways to use immediately.
Shelly Palmer — Professor of Advanced Media (Newhouse School, Syracuse University), CEO of The Palmer Group, and creator of Generative AI for Execs.

Featured Speakers

AGENDA

Wednesday, March 18

Thursday, March 19

Wednesday, March 18

Thursday, March 19

Who Should Attend?

C-Suite executives, senior and mid-career leaders and young professionals hailing from marketer, media, agency, research companies as well as academia will benefit from the breadth and depth of research shared. Industries include automotive, beauty, CPG, finance, food and beverage, hospitality, pharma, retail, and technology.

This event is designed for professionals working in:

• Ad Measurement
• Ad Sales Research
• Analytics & Insights
• Audience Impact
• Data Science
• Marketing Effectiveness
• Media Analytics & Research

Ad Measurement	Ad Sales Research	Analytics and Insights	Audience Impact
Consumer Insights	Data Insights	Data Science	Digital Research
Marketing Analytics	Marketing Effectiveness	Marketing Science	Measurement
Media Analytics	Media Research	Research	Strategy

Board of Curators

AUDIENCExSCIENCE’s Board of Curators lends their insight and expertise to determine which submissions, entered during an industry-wide call for content, will be presented at the conference. This committee includes all of the ARF’s member constituents — Research, Marketers, Media, Agency, and Association/Academics.

Pricing

Untitled Document

	Standard 3/18/26	1-Day Rate 2/13/26	1-Day Rate 3/18/26
IN-PERSON
MEMBER	$1,299	$749	$849
NON-MEMBER	$1,499	$949	$1,049

Untitled Document

	Standard 3/18/26
VIRTUAL
MEMBER	$799
NON-MEMBER	$999

Download the pdf for a list of hotels near People Inc.

8:00-9:00am	Registration & Breakfast
9:00-10:30am	Plenary Sessions Keynote SessionRebuilding the Agency of Record for the AI Era A new vision for the agency’s role in an AI-powered advertising ecosystem—why agencies must rapidly modernize, adopt open tech stacks, become AI-native, and shift the AOR model from inputs and scope to measurable, material brand growth.  Bob Lord – President, Horizon Media Holdings; Interim CEO, Horizon GlobalKeynote Discussions A Discussion: The Next Era of Advertising The advertising industry is at an inflection point, driven by AI, fragmentation, and rising demands for accountability. Legacy models built on scale and impressions are giving way to outcome-driven approaches that link media, creativity, and measurement to real growth. As brands become media and data companies, agencies and partners must evolve—adopting AI-native ways of working, open tech stacks, and modern measurement—to deliver measurable impact and sustainable value. What are our challenges and opportunities? Bob Lord – President, Horizon Media Holdings; Interim CEO, Horizon Global Scott McDonald, Ph.D. – President & CEO, ARF Measurement’s Next Chapter: Defining the New Era Currency, Outcomes & Partnerships Join industry leaders Pete Doe and Paul Donato for a fireside chat exploring the critical elements shaping the new era of measurement, including Nielsen’s big data currency transition, strategic partnerships in measurement, cross platform measurement and advanced audiences. Pete Doe – Chief Research Officer, Nielsen Paul Donato – Chief Research Officer, ARF
10:20 – 10:30am	Celebrating 90 Years For nine decades, ARF has advanced the science and practice of measurement, shaping the industry through evidence-based insight and collaboration. ARF’s founding members celebrate this milestone with pride in its legacy and confidence in its future impact. Bob Liodice – CEO, Association of National Advertisers
10:30-11:00am	Morning Break
	11:10am – 12:30pm Concurrent Breakout Sessions Mix and match: choose to attend any breakout session in any track.

	AI in Marketing Science Moderator: TBD	ATTENTION : Science to Strategy Moderator: TBD	Diverse Audience Strategy Moderator: TBD
11:10 – 11:30am	Synthetic Data, Privacy, and AI in Media AI is used to create a synthetic single-source dataset comprising the entire universe under measurement. Caitlin Leffers – Lead Data Scientist, Comscore Michael Vinson, Ph.D. – Chief Research Officer, Comscore	Brand Reset: Long and Short of Attention and Advertising Impact How attention to modern video formats build the long and the short of brand advertising. David Bassett – Co-Founder and Chief Analytics Officer, Lumen Ewa Zawol – Global Partnership Transformation Director – dentsu David Kietz – Vice President, Client Service, Media Practice Lead, Kantar	How Responsible AI Unlocks Growth with Untapped Audiences Responsible AI unlocks growth for untapped audiences and proves that inclusive brands grow faster. Jason R. Klein – COO and Co-Founder, SeeMe Index
11:40am – 12:00pm	TBD	Ad Effectiveness Across Broadcast, Social, and Streaming Video Video ads shown amongst quality content get more attention and show greater ad effectiveness. Gareth Tuck – CSO & Partner, eye square Lyndsey Albertson – VP Insights & Measurement, NBCU	Trendsetters, Not Targets: Why Black American Audiences Require Cultural Intelligence, Not Just Data Cultural intelligence outperforms demographic targeting when reaching Black American audiences as cultural architects. Kristin Smith-Clinton – VP, Group Strategy Director, UniWorld Group
12:10 – 12:30pm	TBD	How Attention and Emotional Engagement/Expressiveness Influence Advertisement Effectiveness Emotional engagement and attention drive ad evaluation in the opposite ways, and their drivers are different. Deepak Varma – Head of Neuroscience, Kantar Katherine Killeen – Senior Director, Kantar Tracy Gutin – VP Client Service, Kantar	Celebrating Diversity Through Moments How multicultural audiences perceive brand engagement during heritage months and cultural moments. Alexis Harris – Research & Insights Lead, North America and Global Functions, TikTok Jaclyn Williams – Research & Insights Lead, North America and Global Functions, TikTok

	AI in Marketing Science Moderator: TBD	ATTENTION & PRIVACY: Science to Strategy Moderator: TBD	Diverse Audience Strategy Moderator: TBD
1:40 – 2:00pm	From Fun to Full-Funnel: The Marketing Power of Gen AI and AR How GenAI and AR are reshaping advertising effectiveness—while keeping trust and human creativity central. Giulia Manca, Ph.D. – Senior Research Consultant, eye square Aarti Bhaskaran – Global Head of Research & Insights, Snap Inc. Stefan Schonherr – EVP, Brand & Media Experience, eye square	Rethinking Privacy Across the Advertising Ecosystem How consumers view data privacy as a basic right and how trust and accountability are distributed across the advertising ecosystem. Joetta Gobell, Ph.D. – SVP, Data Strategy & Insights, People Inc. Jennifer Ng – GM, Advertiser Insights, The Trade Desk Tracy Adams, Ph.D. – Sr. Director, Research & Insights, ARF	TBD
2:10 – 2:30pm	Humans Still Pick the Best Ideas: What the World’s First AI Creativity Benchmark Reveals AI creativity race ends in a tie: diversity beats rankings, human judgment beats algorithms. Pip Bingemann – Co-Founder/CEO, Springboards.ai	Sound Science: How Music is the Missing Link in Marketing ROI How the right music makes a campaign more memorable, engaging and profitable. Amy Crawford – VP, Creative Development (Americas), Songtradr/MassiveMusic	Updating the TelevisaUnivision Household Graph for the Future A probabilistic identity graph for clustering households through Bayesian fusion of activity sightings and mappings. Sergey Fogelson, Ph.D – Head of Data Science, TelevisaUnivision Pouya Tehrani, Ph.D. – Director of Data Science, TelevisaUnivision
2:40 – 3:00pm	The AI Creative Testing Revolution New applications for creative testing using new AI tools. Duane Varan, Ph.D. – CEO, MediaScience	Where Attention Lives: New Evidence from YouTube’s Premium Video Ad Solutions YouTube’s premium video ad solutions deliver outsized attention and impact, proven by Adelaide’s AU metric. Megan Danielson – Director, Agency Sales & Agency Data & Measurement Solutions, Google Adam Shlachter – US, Client President, WPP Media Zach Kubin – Co-Founder and VP of Sales & Brand Partnerships, Adelaide	Driving Smarter Health Outcomes with Human-Centric Insights and Cross-Media Intelligence Empowering smokers to quit through smarter, human-centric media planning in privacy constrained markets. Efthymios Psaraftis – Senior Manager, Global AdTech & Capability, Kenvue

3:00 – 3:30pm	Afternoon Break
3:30 – 5:00pm	Plenary Sessions What is TV Now? Is TV itself clearly and coherently defined, beyond the fact that it is content watched on television sets—or is it a loose collection of services, business models, and regulatory arrangements that have remarkably little in common, beyond the device on which they are consumed? Can semantic boundary-policing deliver something valuable for the industry, even if it doesn’t align with how audiences and advertisers see the marketplace? Industry leaders will take part in a heated discussion about what TV is and isn’t, why it matters, and who decides. Sean Cunningham – President & CEO, VAB Julian Zilberbrand – Global Head of Data Solutions, LG Ads Solutions Natasha Potashnik – VP, Data, Research and Measurement, Vevo More panelists TBA Moderator: Jon Watts – Managing Director, Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement
	Next-Gen Talent: Inside ARF WIDE Scholars discuss what they’re learning, applying, and bringing to the future of the industry.
4:45 – 5:00pm	Award Presentation 2026 Erwin Ephron Demystification Award The Erwin Demystification Award, founded in tribute to Erwin Ephron, the father of ‘recency,’ and legend in his own right, honors industry leaders who can, among other criteria, similarly take complex subjects and make them accessible and understandable.
5:00 – 7:00pm	Cocktail Reception

8:00-9:00am	Registration & Breakfast
9:00-10:30am	Plenary Sessions Wall Street’s View of the Ad Industry In this talk, Laura Martin will discuss changing ad industry economics, including revenue reallocations, cost–cutting, CTV’s pivot toward performance ads, the growing pricing power of live, concentration, consolidation, and regulation. On the measurement front, she will discuss the economics of signal degradation (e.g., privacy regs, platform limits, identity loss), ROAS trends in an AI-impacted world, the rising attribution threat from full-funnel Walled Gardens, pricing power as AI lowers barriers to entry, and how much economic upside from AI will be captured by the measurement segment of the ad industry. Laura Martin, CFA & CMT – Senior Internet & Media Analyst, Needham & Company Rebuilding Marketing Evidence in a Fragmented Ecosystem Cross-channel measurement of marketing effectiveness remains a challenge for marketers. Campaigns can often be measured well within a single environment, but it remains difficult to piece together data from different channels and platforms. Identity spines and traditional baselines are eroding, making it increasingly difficult to build a coherent comparative view of overall impact. Although Google has a strong measurement regime within its owned environment, it has also made notable contributions to emerging cross-channel measurement solutions. Its support for Project Aquila has advocated for a privacy-safe way to estimate reach and frequency across participating platforms. The launch of Meridian, an open-source marketing mix model available on GitHub, has improved comparability and quality in this fundamental tool for marketing effectiveness measurement. But what next? Can we improve the consistency of definitions and methods across environments in incrementality experiments? Without compromising consumer privacy or the proprietary IP of different publishers, can we devise transparency checks to build market confidence in cross-channel measurement? And even if we don’t achieve complete unification of methods, can we develop tools for “probabilistic joining” of evidence streams from different sources? Tina Daniels – President & COO, Aquila Stephen Mangan – Head of Cross-Media Measurement, Solutions & Thought Leadership, Google Marc Vermut – VP, Knowledge Lab, TransUnion Moderator: Scott McDonald, Ph.D. – President & CEO Tribute to Radha Subramanyam We honor the memory of Radha Subramanyam, whose leadership and vision helped shape modern media research and audience measurement. A champion of rigorous analytics and collaborative innovation, she elevated the role of data in understanding audiences and guiding industry transformation. Her impact lives on through the ideas she advanced and the many colleagues she inspired. Amy Reisenbach – President of Entertainment, CBS
10:30-11:00am	Morning Break
	11:00am – 12:30pm Concurrent Breakout Sessions Mix and match: choose to attend any breakout session in any track.

Overview

Call for Content - Now Open

How to Submit

Overview

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Featured Speakers

AGENDA

Who Should Attend?

Board of Curators

Pricing

Platinum Sponsors

Host

Gold Sponsors

Host

Related Content

	AI in Marketing Science Moderator: TBD	Context: Alignment & Relevance Moderator: TBD	Innovations in Video Measurement Moderator: TBD
11:10 – 11:30am	How Consumers Perceive AI-Generated Advertising AI-generated ads perform effectively and remain trusted, even with labeling and critical media coverage. Dirk Ziems – Co-Founder, Concept M Research & Consulting Steffen Schmidt, Ph.D. – Founding Partner & Managing Director, Concept M Research & Consulting	Efficient Brand Growth Through Neuroscience-Trained AI Neuroscience-trained AI is proven to consistently increase advertising sales effect by double digits. Bill Harvey – CEO, RMT-Bill Harvey Consulting Michael Platt, Ph.D. – Director, Wharton Neuroscience Initiative	FAST is Vast: Demystifying Streaming’s Next Frontier FAST has become mainstream, giving viewers what they like, and advertisers a highly attentive audience. Nicole Cooper – Head of Audience Insights, Roku Michele Donati – Chief of Futures, The Futures Group @ Horizon
11:40am – 12:00pm	Consumer Behavior in AI-Enhanced Search Environments Uncovering how AI summaries and CTV ads influence search behavior and brand perception Annie Hagerty – Manager, Research & Insights, Comcast Advertising Daniel Bulgrin – Director, Research Operations & Insights, MediaScience	Context Effects and Reverse Context Effects Program context increases ad performance, especially for sports, but bad ads can hurt program engagement. Pedro Almeida – CEO, Mediaprobe Ed Hunt – Research Associate, Medill Spiegel Research Center, Northwestern University Larry DeGaris – Executive Director, Medill Spiegel Research Center, Northwestern University	Tackling Fragmentation Challenges with Robust CTV Solutions First-party TV streaming data combined with panel-only data enhances audience measurement. Pete Doe – Chief Research Officer, Nielsen David Kurzynski – SVP, Data Science, Nielsen
12:10 – 12:30pm	TBD	Maximizing Brand Recall Through Contextual Alignment Using AI-derived keywords to define contextual alignment increases ad effectiveness regardless of emotional engagement. Kristin Shumaker, Ph.D. – Sr. Research Analyst, Comcast Advertising Twinkal Patel – Product Manager, Comcast Technology Solutions	Using Synthetic Data to Unlock Programming Measurement for A Streaming-First World Understanding the role of sports programming in the acquisition, engagement, and retention of streaming subscribers. Gilles Duterque – VP, Data Science, Antenna Brendan Brady – Director of Strategy, Antenna


12:00 – 1:30pm	Women in Analytics /Young Pros Luncheon — Connect & Inspire: Strategies for Success Join the ARF Women in Analytics and Young Pros groups for an interactive luncheon on March 19 at AUDIENCExSCIENCE. Board Members from both groups will lead dynamic, small-group conversations designed to spark connections and sharpen communication skills.
12:30-1:30pm	Lunch
	1:40 – 3:00pm Concurrent Breakout Sessions

	Audience Measurement: Contrasting Views Moderator: TBD	Context: Alignment & Relevance Moderator: TBD	Creator Marketing Moderator: TBD
1:40 – 2:00pm	Reach, Overlaps, and the Independence Assumption The independence assumption is often better than an expensive single-source panel. Joe Garland – Director of Data Analysis, Comscore Michael Vinson, Ph.D. – Chief Research Officer, Comscore Bill Engel – Board of Directors, Tenetic	Matching Ad Creative Effectiveness and Emotions to Program Content A case study that shows the importance of emotional congruence to improve ad performance Peter Daboll – Head of USA, DAIVID	Decoding the Creators Mindset – Powering Partnerships that Perform What Creators expect from brands, platforms, and followers for better partnerships. Megan de Leon – VP, Market Strategy & Understanding, Ipsos, NA Ryan Huff – Global Research & Insights, Snapchat
2:10 – 2:30pm	Methods for Cross-Platform Reach That are 40% More Accurate than Random Duplication Why common reach models underestimate audience overlap—and how to improve cross platform video reach estimates. Brian Morse – Head of Collective, Locality Prasad Joglegkar – Founder and CEO, Deben Media Corp.	Win the Moment: Turn Sports Fans Peak Emotions Into Measurable Brand Outcomes Uncover how AI timed advertising during peak emotionally charged live sports moments drives attention, recall, and business impact. Jennifer Pelino – SVP Media Growth and Data Partnerships, Genius Sports Abhijit Shome – VP, Marketing Technology, MLS	TBD
2:40 – 3:00pm	The Impression Gap: What Works Harder for Marketers on CTV: Premium Video or YouTube Exploring the differences between how audiences consume, engage and pay attention to CTV content via Premium Video Platforms vs. YouTube. Yan Liu – CEO & Co-Founder, Tvision Benjamin Vandegrift – SVP, Measurement Strategy and Innovation, VAB	TBD	Proving Influencer Success with RCTs and Brand Lift Data How influencer marketing outperforms traditional media across different generations and industries. Tyler Montague – VP of Client & Research Success, Swayable Maddie Perkins – Director, Strategic Planning, Influential