Leveraging Data

• Research & Data Quality
• Article

Systematic Sensemaking Offers Unique Insights into Market Experiences

Many researchers struggle with developing and writing about their work in a way that is relevant to advertising and marketing practices. This article offers a process—a toolkit of sorts—for crafting qualitative research that is both accessible to industry readers and impactful to the practices of advertising and marketing. A webinar link featuring the authors presenting their findings is also provided for members in the summary below.

• Ad Effectiveness & ROI
• Article

What Brands Did in 2020 & the Impact on Market Share

• ARF ORIGINAL RESEARCH

This multi-year project’s objective is to understand how brands reacted to the events of 2020 and what the long-term implications were. In that fateful year, brands encountered a pandemic-driven recession, lockdown and periods of social unrest, along with the impact of economic stimulus, leading to the current state of inflation. Questions this study looks to address include, what happens to a brand’s market share if it goes “dark.” Was this different than previous recessions? How long was recovery? Did small brands take advantage of inexpensive media and if so, how did this affect their market share? Findings from the initial year are now available.

• Article

The ARF Immersive Advertising Study

What attitudes do advertisers currently have about virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR) and the metaverse? This is an important question, since according to one report by Snap, nearly 75% of the world’s population (and almost all of those using social communications apps right now) are expected to be frequent VR users. A new ARF study, using data from The Advertiser Perceptions Ad Pros proprietary community, gives us a much fuller understanding of advertisers’ attitudes and behaviors toward these nascent technologies.

• Targets & Segments
• Article

Is Privacy Vs. Personalization a Zero-Sum Game?

• MSI

While privacy regulations such as the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) can potentially benefit society, they must strike an effective balance between firms’ need to target their messages and consumers’ need for privacy and security. Modeling “what if” scenarios can help marketers and policymakers find that equilibrium.

• Research & Data Quality
• Article

A Guide to Validating Marketing Performance Models

Over the last dozen years, marketers have seen numerous analytical models surface to help guide data driven decision-making. Yet, many remain unsure of how trustworthy such models are. That’s why the Attribution Working Group of the ARF Cross-Platform Measurement Council put together this guidebook to help arm all stakeholders with a basic understanding of marketing performance model validation issues. This paper includes a set of considerations and questions that encourage and facilitate dialog between end clients and model providers about the performance of marketing performance models.

• Research & Data Quality
• Article

Demystifying Data Cleanrooms: A Marketer’s Handbook

The ARF Cross-Platform Measurement Council has put out a practical handbook to help marketers and media operators gain a full understanding of data cleanrooms. It explains how cleanroom vendors provide clients and their partners with such a service, which links first-party data across two or more companies on a record level in a secure and privacy-compliant fashion. Interest in cleanrooms has been increasing because the disappearance of third-party cookies is on the horizon. The handbook not only demystifies cleanrooms, but it also includes use cases for insights, audience activation and measurement, and offers practical advice on questions to ask data cleanroom providers.

• Audience & Media Measurement
• Article

Spillover Benefits of Online Ads

• MSI

Email advertising can increase spending in actual, physical retail stores, new statistical tools show. If this is not uplifting enough for those who deal with such advertising, analysis published in an MSI working paper found something else surprising. The effects are highest among consumers with fewer recent interactions with that particular retailer.

• Research & Data Quality
• Article

Can Observational Methods Assess the Causal Effect of Ads?

• MSI

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.

• Analytics & Data Science
• Article

Optimizing Interventions Along the Customer Journey

• MSI

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.

• Targets & Segments
• Article

How Does a Sports Sponsorship Announcement Affect a Sponsor’s Market Value?

• JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH

Do sports sponsorship announcements help or hurt the stock-market returns of sponsor companies and their rivals? A study comparing these effects in the U.S. and Japan provides insight into competitive advantages (or lack thereof) between sponsors and their rivals, depending on market reactions in each country, whether the sporting event is held in a home country and the market impact between rival firms.