Discover the latest and most impactful research on leveraging data analytics to generate business insights 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.
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.
Member Only Access
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.
Member Only Access
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.
Member Only Access
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.
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
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.
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
Do digital voice assistants make website navigation easier? Not necessarily, according to this MSI working paper. Researchers found that a sense of “social presence” created by such assistants can evoke social norms. And so, these devices can in fact predispose consumers to more prosocial behavior, such as donating to important causes and tipping.
Member Only Access
Which is more efficient when it comes to advantageous decision outcomes, marketing-mix metrics or financial metrics? Researchers in this award-winning MSI working paper investigated this question, basing their research on a behavioral framework and statistical model. On average, according to their sample, marketing-mix metrics are more effective than financial. Even so, managers seem more eager to use financial metrics, possibly, because they are easier to understand across the organization.
Member Only Access