Read the latest and most impactful research on future states and emerging technologies for innovating research methods here. All the research listed comes from the ARF or one of its subsidiaries: The Journal of Advertising Research (JAR), the Marketing Science Institute (MSI) or the Coalition for Innovative Media Measurement (CIMM). Feel free to bookmark this page, as it will be updated periodically.
Artificial intelligence is already changing advertising, but how will it reshape it moving forward? Researchers unpack the potential effects of three different forms of AI—analytic, interpretive and creative—on seven categories of advertising industry stakeholders. Can those who embrace the evolving creative AI mechanisms get ahead of competitors?
Member Only Access
While Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs) are ideal for advertising measurement, it is not always feasible to conduct one. Until advertising platforms are willing to provide more information about how they deliver targeted ads or implement auctions, alternative observational methods are unlikely to reliably estimate causal effects. That includes utilizing newer machine learning techniques.
Member Only Access
Random controlled experiments for A/B testing help improve things like a company's marketing or customer service. However, individually optimizing interventions may not always capture interactions across the entire purchase decision journey. To optimize interventions more holistically, use a Bayesian reinforcement learning model. It can integrate multiple historical experiments, which can improve both current impact as well as future learning.
Member Only Access
The ARF partnered with the UK’s Attention Council on this project, whose aim was to gauge the level of interest in attention metrics among ARF members and the Wonks community. Sixty-three participants took the survey in January of this year (2022). The qualitative study focuses on variations among the industry’s sectors in their outlook on attention metrics. The differences in outlook between researchers and the buy-side were particularly interesting.
Member Only Access
Advertising can trigger cognition, affect or experience, according to the influential Hierarchy of Effects (HoE) model. The following study valides the basic integrated HoE model. However, it also finds that operating sequence varies across brands. The predominant one is affect → cognition → experience (ACE).
Member Only Access
In December 2020, the Journal of Advertising Research published an independent seminal bibliographic study that identified key publishing trends since the academic journal’s inception in 1960. Now, a more granular overview expands on those findings to reveal the prominence of practitioner authors amid a wide range of themes, while encouraging future submissions.
Member Only Access
It’s no surprise that new product launches often fail to meet their targets. The trick for managers is to improve their predictions for such products. They must balance the costs and benefits of many different data sources and analytic techniques in order to improve forecasting. To enhance the accuracy of predicting the market-level sales of new products, researchers Marton Varga, Anita Tusche, Paulo Albuquerque, Nadine Gier, Bernd Weber, and Hilke Plassmann, analyzed the added value of different data types. Their conclusions are illuminating.
Member Only AccessA European research team is on a mission to advance the development and use of electroencephalogram (EEG)-based methods for evaluating advertising effectiveness. Although their research leaves open questions, it suggests that recent developments in this area—specifically moment-to-moment EEG-based indicators—provide a clearer view into emotional response and attention to ads than previous EEG methods. Read the article.
Companies increasingly target nonprofit web and social media followers by using cause-related marketing display ads on the websites of charity or nonprofit organizations. Two key formats are used: either transactional (representing an explicit donation amount that a consumer can make to the nonprofit) or nontransactional (representing online cause sponsorship). Which one is more successful? A new study has some answers.
Member Only Access
There are a number of different biases that can impact panel and census research and big data sets which utilize artificial intelligence (AI) or machine learning (ML). The attached Knowledge at Hand identifies over two dozen unique biases. It discusses how they might occur and what mitigation options researchers should consider to account for them.
Member Only Access