Tracy Adams is Senior Director of Research & Insights at the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), where she leads large-scale initiatives that shape how evidence informs strategy across the advertising and marketing ecosystem. Working at the intersection of research, strategy, and decision-making, she brings sociological and cultural perspectives to how insights are framed, interpreted, and applied—helping organizations move from insight to action. With nearly two decades of experience spanning academia and industry, Tracy specializes in building shared frameworks that help the field navigate complexity, methodological change, and the evolving role of AI in marketing research. She convenes interdisciplinary leaders across brands, agencies, platforms, and academia to advance rigorous, forward-looking approaches to measurement, analytics, and research innovation. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University.
Daniel Block is the GM of Data Revenue & Partnerships at Fetch, where he oversees the company’s data business across sales, partnerships, and licensing. As a member of the executive leadership team with P&L ownership in this space, he is focused on scaling revenue and building a category-defining data business in Fetch’s next phase of growth. Previously, Daniel served as Head of Corporate Business Development at Fetch, where he led the company’s expansion into new verticals including streaming, restaurants, and fuel helping diversify the business model and unlock new revenue streams through strategic partnerships. In his current role, Daniel and his team are responsible for bringing Fetch’s deterministic, purchase-based data into the broader advertising ecosystem, partnering with leading DSPs, SSPs, streaming platforms, and social companies to embed audiences and closed-loop measurement directly into the platforms where media decisions are made. This enables brands to move beyond proxy metrics and optimize campaigns based on real-world purchase outcomes. Prior to Fetch, Daniel was Head of Business Development at Attain, where he led strategy and partnerships for its outcomes-based measurement products across agencies, platforms, and publishers. He previously held strategic roles at Roku, focusing on ad revenue strategy, partnerships, M&A, and the launch of new business lines.
Roland Brenner is Global Head of Creative Go to Market at Amazon Ads. His focus is to connect advertisers with creative solutions to tell or enhance their brand story, including the latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools that drive asset production efficiency and expand creative messaging possibilities. Roland joined Amazon Ads in 2017 to help brands increase visibility of their products or services. He created the Amazon Ads added value video production program, which now incorporates AI gen outputs to rapidly deliver :30 TV-quality commercials for brands to run on Amazon Streaming TV environments. With seven years of brand agency background, Roland has a passion for defining the intersection of branding and commerce via Creative.
Rick Bruner is Head of U.S. Partnerships at MASS Analytics, a provider of always-on marketing mix modeling, and CEO of Central Control, Inc., focused on incrementality experiments for better measurement of advertising ROI. He has been a leader in advertising analytics for more than 20 years, having led research and product teams at DoubleClick, Google, MTV Networks, Marketing Evolution, Viant, and Guideline. He is Vice Chair for the U.S. of I-COM, a global forum for marketing science, and founder and moderator of the influential Research Wonks industry discussion community. Beyond media and advertising, Rick brings decades of experience across a wide range of market research methods, including surveys and tracking studies, audience segmentation and profiling, conjoint and multivariate analysis, pricing research, experimental and quasi-experimental design (e.g., difference-in-differences), forecasting, syndicated data, and brand equity and health tracking. His qualitative expertise includes focus groups, in-depth and executive interviews, ethnographic research, online communities, and patient and customer journey mapping. He has also applied advanced analytics such as natural language processing, social listening, sentiment and text mining, predictive modeling, market basket analysis, simulation and scenario planning, and user experience research. He has consulted on market research and advertising effectiveness for organizations including American Express, IBM, Gillette, Meta, Charter Communications, Novo Nordisk, Novartis, Reckitt, Anthem, Fidelity, and others. A former Ad Age reporter and book author (Net Results and Net Results.2), Rick is a recipient of the Interactive Advertising Bureau's Service Excellence Award for Research and the Advertising Research Foundation’s David Ogilvy Award, among other distinctions. He holds a BA from Columbia University.
Jeffrey Bustos is SVP, Retail Media Analytics at Merkle, where he leads the development of unified measurement frameworks across retail media and enterprise marketing. A former architect of the IAB/MRC Retail Media Measurement Standards, he focuses on applying machine learning and AI to improve how brands and retailers measure incrementality, optimize investment, and make faster, more consistent decisions across channels. His work centers on turning fragmented retail media signals into practical, scalable systems that drive real business outcomes.
Megan Cameron is the EVP, Retail Media Solution Lead for New Stream Media at dentsu. In this role, she partners with retailers and commerce owners to help build, optimize, and scale their retail and commerce businesses. She’s specifically focused on identifying and bringing to life the commerce media business strategy that leads with innovation, generates profitable revenue, and enhances the consumer experience. She’s spent much of her career in the retail and CPG space, most recently leading media network teams at Fortune 100 retailers including Dollar General, Target, CVS, Nordstrom and Albertsons. She has deep subject matter expertise in retail media, programmatic buying, addressable advertising, and cross-functional informatics. She’s also an honoree of Ad Age’s 40 Under 40 and a member of The List, from Ad Age in partnership with Meta.
Cait Carlson is the Vice President of Retail Strategy at Havas Market, where she operates at the intersection of retail, media, and technology, helping brands unlock growth across the evolving commerce landscape. She specializes in building integrated strategies that connect retail media, eCommerce, and national media ensuring brands show up in ways that drive both performance and meaningful consumer experiences. Cait’s passion for retail was sparked early in her career as a buyer at Walmart eCommerce, where she developed a deep understanding of omnichannel retail and the dynamics that drive performance at scale. This experience shaped her approach to strategy, evaluating every opportunity through the lenses of the retailer, the brand, and the customer. Cait leads with empathy, embraces challenges, and pushes her teams to challenge the status quo. Throughout her career, Cait has helped launch and scale iconic brands within the world’s largest retail environments and has built high-performing teams from the ground up. She partners with leading brands to rethink growth within retail ecosystems, with a focus on the rise of retail media and the shift toward fully integrated commerce. Cait is particularly passionate about marketplace growth and building integrated commerce solutions that better reflect how people discover and buy today. She holds a B.A. in Psychology and Communication from Wake Forest University.
Larry DeGaris is the Executive Director of the Medill Spiegel Research Center at Northwestern University. The Spiegel Center is the leading university-based research center on marketing communications. Founded with a gift from Ted Spiegel and family, the Center has a long history of research on retail. Along with colleagues from Medill's Retail Analytics Council, Larry is co-author of the recently published Rethinking Retail: A Marketer’s Guide to Decoding Consumer Preference through Data Analytics.
Paul Donato joined the ARF as Chief Research Officer in October 2017. Paul is a highly regarded leader in media and advertising research with more than two decades of industry experience. Earlier in his career he co-founded WPP’s Media Research Business Unit, served as CEO of Kantar Media, and Technical Director of IBOPE Latin America. He was the EVP and CRO for The Nielsen Company for more than a decade, overseeing Nielsen retail, consumer, mobile, and media measurement methodologies. Upon leaving Nielsen, Paul founded Jatopond, a media and market research firm. He also has led business units at Simmons, and at Audits and Surveys Worldwide. He currently sits on the Future State Committee of the National Air and Space Museum. In addition to leading the research team, Paul will also play an active role in overall ARF leadership, helping to guide future direction.
Mike is Circana’s global retail marketing expert who works with leading retailers to build unparalleled end-to-end capabilities to drive personalization and performance optimization across the marketing process. From behavior-based shopper analytics, to measurement and post-campaign ad exposed customer analytics, his team works to bring the power of customer loyalty data and media attribution together to drive growth for retailers and their retail media network advertisers. Prior to joining Circana, Mike spent more than 10 years with Kraft Foods and then 10 years with Walmart. He led category marketing where he oversaw hundreds of millions of dollars in integrated retail marketing campaigns. He was there in the early days of retail media working closely with the Walmart @labs team to launch the WMX loyalty platform. Mike holds a master’s degree in marketing from Wake Forest University and a bachelor’s degree in finance from Indiana University.
As the Managing Director and Head of Sales for Kinective Media by United Airlines, Aaron Gallagher is building a brand-new best-in-class sales and commercial team for the world’s first traveler and commerce media network from the world’s largest airline. Through Kinective Media, advertisers can map their customer’s journey, marketing to United’s customers before, during and after their travel journeys. The network has been custom-built on a foundation of technologies and partners, along with a broader set of data assets to enable premium brand advertisers to connect with a valuable audience, at scale.
Prior to Kinective Media, Aaron was leading the digital ad sales organization at Warner Bros. Discovery, where he played an integral role in merging the Discovery and Scripps Networks digital sales organizations and built a strategic ad sales and revenue strategy for the combined companies. And during his tenure at Time Inc., Aaron was in sales leadership roles at CNNMoney.com, People.com, and the corporate digital sales group.
Aaron graduated with a B.A. in English from the College of the Holy Cross and is a long time New Yorker. He loves to travel and spend time at the beach in Montauk, NY.
A born problem solver, Elizabeth has turned her natural curiosity about people and their behavior into a rewarding career working with some of the world’s leading brands like, Unilever, Molson Coors, Intel and Kraft Heinz. She’s helped clients partner with nearly every major retailer by bringing them insightful solutions that transcend the category. Elizabeth puts her problem-solving skills to work at home as well, from launching Arc Worldwide’s proprietary operating system to creating a virtual education platform for thousands of Publicis Groupe employees worldwide, to creating Sages, a business resource group, paving the way to a more welcoming and accessible industry for advertising professionals ages 50+. Elizabeth always brings to her work a growth mentality, the right amount of competitiveness and a whole lot of humanity. Along with being Arc Worldwide’s Chief Strategy Officer, she is also an Adjunct Professor on the faculty at Northwestern University in their graduate program, where she teaches shopper marketing to the next generation of aspiring marketing professionals.
Todd has been a CPG Industry Leader at companies of all sizes including Colgate-Palmolive, Simple Mills, and Glanbia. He has experience growing challenger and legacy brands through both Brick & Mortar and digital roles. He was recently named The Drum’s Commerce Media Power 100 for 2026 and was a top contributor to a recent IAB AI Committee’s AI Personalization Playbook. By combining deep industry expertise with structured knowledge-sharing programs, he successfully equips cross-functional teams to execute forward-thinking, data-driven commerce strategies. He analyzes omnichannel & Generative AI trends and challenges. He generously shares those insights via frequent LinkedIn posts, podcast guest appearances (BRAVE COMMERCE, The Digital Deep Dive, The Digital Shelf Cast, Behind the Numbers), webinars (firstmovr, Dentsu/Northwestern, Euromonitor, Stratably.com), live events (Shoptalk US, Profitero, CRC), article writer and contributor (Forbes.com, Digiday), etc. From a personal perspective, he was a walk-on for the two-time NCAA Tournament Men’s Basketball team at University of Wisconsin-Green Bay (UWGB Fighting Phoenix). He loves to help people where he can and enjoys learning activities including volunteer organization Feed My Starving Children. One of his favorite quotes is, "Change has never happened this fast before and it will never be this slow again."
Jake leads measurement strategy at Uber, ensuring advertisers have all of the tools required to understand campaign performance on its advertising platform. Prior to Uber, Jake has held roles at Roku and within WPP. He has contributed to multiple standards and working papers at industry organizations and working groups. Jake received his undergraduate degree from Haverford College, and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters.
As a Senior Director of Solution Strategy, Joe helps a diverse array of clients harness the power of digital and AI insights to make smarter, more human-centered business decisions. His experience spans categories including apparel, CPG, QSR, technology, beauty, and healthcare. Joe has a strong track record of designing and executing agile, scalable digital and AI intelligence programs that align with strategic business goals and complement other research methodologies. He is passionate about using social data to illuminate the “why” behind consumer behavior, integrating it with traditional and emerging approaches to provide a holistic view of people today.
Jay is a market researcher with extensive experience in designing and managing market research studies, data analysis, and drawing out valuable insights from market research data. His career spans blue chip client companies (Time Inc. NBC, and AOL), industry-leading market research suppliers (Gallup, Knowledge Networks and GfK MRI), and an academic research institute. He has been published in a wide variety of publications (academic journals, a Chinese advertising trade publication, a British advertising industry journal, and The Philadelphia Inquirer). He is a co-inventor on three issued US patents for methods of media exposure.
Scott became the CEO and President of the Advertising Research Foundation in March 2017. Prior to joining the ARF, he held senior research positions at leading global media companies, including 18 years at Time Warner, and 14 years at Conde Nast, covering both the consumer and the advertising sides of the media business. Throughout his career, he has kept a foot in both the academic and business worlds, teaching for 5 years at NYU and for 18 years at Columbia Business School. He serves as an adviser to the Social Science Matrix Program at UC Berkeley and is on the Board of the Population Reference Bureau. An avid art lover, he also is on the board of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He holds an A.B. degree from UC Berkeley and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
As Senior Vice President, Commerce Media at Mastercard, Jill Moser is responsible for the global commercialization, product development, and market success functions for Mastercard Commerce Media. Jill has been featured for loyalty thought leadership pieces in various publications, podcasts, panels, and keynote speaking engagements and has been recognized by Loyalty360, the Digital Commerce Alliance, the Cardlinx Association, to name a few. Prior to Mastercard, Jill was the Head of BankAmeriDeals, Partner Rewards and Incentives at Bank of America. Her past experiences also include loyalty leadership positions at companies including Shop Your Way, Inmar, and BlackHawk Incentives. Jill is a graduate of the University of Louisville. She and her family split time between North Carolina and Kentucky.
As Director of Commercial Account Management, Melissa Myres manages a team of account managers who are responsible for maximizing the value CPG clients receive from long-term investment in 84.51°’s solutions across the full portfolio including 84.51° Insights and Kroger Precision Marketing. She collaborates across teams to deliver industry-leading solutions to clients and the market that solve the needs of today and tomorrow. Melissa joined 84.51° in 2020 as an insights account manager, where she managed a portfolio of CPG clients helping them translate data and insights into strategy. Prior to joining the company, Melissa spent more than 11 years at Procter & Gamble selling a variety of brands to retailers across multiple channels. Beyond her professional contributions, Melissa is an active advocate for CPG and retail community development. She regularly shares her expertise to elevate education and thought leadership within the industry. In 2024, she won 84.51°’s Golden Microphone Award for increasing awareness through industry events and thought leadership and was named in the 40 Under 40 class of 2025 by Path to Purchase. During that time, she participated in 25 industry articles, 12 interviews, 1 byline, 2 podcasts and 2 conference presentations. Melissa graduated from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University with a major in marketing and management and a minor in biology. She resides in the Chicagoland area with her husband, Grant; two kids, Finley and Laurel; and two cats, Pickles and Peach. She serves as a Lake County Election Clerk and is an alumnae of Delta Gamma women's fraternity.
Margaret Posh is a Principal over Retail at Circana who’s spent the last 15+ years of her career focused on retail media with time prior to Circana at Walmart Media Connect and Quotient Technology (now Neptune). She’s an award-winning sales leader with seasoned success driving media sales strategies into multi-million-dollar revenue growth. She has expertise in translating branded concepts across digital multimedia channels for retail and CPG businesses with a history of defining solutions for website sales, desktop, mobile, search, CTV, social media, and email marketing. Her passion for retail is centered around building collaboration to unlock the organizational silos on both sides (retailer and supplier) to deliver better strategy and increased investment. The collaborative model ensures there is data and strategy pre-and-post campaign to drive smart campaign set-up, learning, and optimization. Margaret holds a B.A. in Communications from DePaul University.
Cara Pratt leads Circana’s strategic growth partnerships with retailers, and drives the strategy for media, leveraging Circana’s comprehensive data, science and technology to improve advertising effectiveness. Cara has two decades of expertise in delivering innovative retail and media solutions to drive measurable value for retailers, brands and consumers. Cara joined Circana from 84.51°, the retail data science, insights and media company and wholly owned subsidiary of Kroger, where she served as SVP Media, Insights and Loyalty, overseeing Kroger’s integrated retail media, consumer insights and loyalty marketing business. She was instrumental in the creation of Kroger Precision Marketing to connect media exposure with in-store sales, creating a more effective media landscape for brands and elevating the consumer shopping experience. Earlier in her career, she served as a Retail Client Solutions Executive at Circana predecessor, IRI. Cara also spent more than a decade at dunnhumby, where she held multiple senior roles, including SVP, Specialty Retail and Sector Expansion, before joining IRI. She holds a BA in Economics from Denison University and lives in Cincinnati.
Hailing from the frozen tundra of Minnesota, Chad is a classically trained brand marketer with 17 years of experience in the CPG and marketing world, having worked for General Mills, the NFL, The Clorox Company, and most recently Whirlpool Corporation as head of Brand, Product and Insights for KitchenAid Small Appliances. He’s an avid believer in the enduring power of brands, the role that brands play in making people’s days and lives better, and in the people who shepherd those brands along. He has his BA of Finance from the University of Minnesota and MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management. Chad is located in St. Joseph with his wife, Ashley, sons, Grady (4) and Wells (2), and two cats that alternate between adorable and frenetic. In his free time, he enjoys camping, traveling, finding new places to dine, and watching Minnesota professional sports teams lose on a seemingly weekly basis.
E.J. Schultz is the News Editor for Ad Age, overseeing breaking news and daily coverage. He also contributes reporting on the beverage, automotive and sports marketing industries. He is a former reporter for McClatchy newspapers, including the Fresno Bee, where he covered business and state government and politics.
Jess has 20 years of experience partnering with agencies and marketers on advertising effectiveness, cross-platform analytics and programmatic solutions. As Head of Partnerships at Proximic by Comscore, she leads the growth of the company’s programmatic business by forging strategic alliances with top adtech platforms and driving innovation through new partnerships. Jess oversees a team of partner and account managers who are dedicated to strengthening Comscore’s relationships with leading agencies and advertising platforms.
Nicole Whitlow leads Global Consumer & Market Insights for Whirlpool Corporation’s iconic KitchenAid brand, overseeing research strategy around the globe. Previously, she spearheaded Brand & Advertising Insights for Whirlpool’s North American portfolio, including household names like Whirlpool, Maytag, JennAir, and Amana. With two decades of experience in research and data, Nicole specializes in translating human needs into meaningful growth opportunities for brands. As a passionate lifelong learner, Nicole holds an MBA from DePaul University and recently earned a certification in Consumer Centricity and AI-driven Marketing Measurement from NYU. Nicole currently serves on the ARF Board of Directors and is a two-time judge for the David Ogilvy Awards, where she champions the vital intersection of research and creative excellence.
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