Leveraging Data

• Audience & Media Measurement
• Article

How to Leverage the Video Game Ecosystem for Marketing Analytics

• MSI

Online video gaming is a channel that has grown significantly in popularity in the last decade and the trend is likely to continue. Due to a massive group of highly engaged gamers, marketers can use this channel to understand this segment and their needs much better. However, this ecosystem, along with providing unique opportunities, also comes with unique challenges. This Marketing Science Institute (MSI) working paper offers a roadmap.

• Analytics & Data Science
• Article

Data Pooling could Reinvigorate Online Display Ads

• MSI

Buying online display ads in bulk through online exchanges makes it difficult to ascertain the effectiveness of such ads, a situation that’s less than ideal. This is especially true for new websites. One proposed solution is to pool data across advertisers and publishers. Doing so while running matching simulations can substantially improve the welfare of such ads for advertisers, publishers and networks, too.

• Research & Data Quality
• Article

MSI Blue Ribbon Report Preview Charts the Future of MMM

• MSI

The practice of marketing mixed modeling (MMM) is increasing, research finds, partially because of the implementation of privacy restrictions. Today, finding appropriate providers to optimize marketing investments remains challenging. This was the impetus behind the Marketing Science Institute (MSI)’s Blue Ribbon Report on MMM. This free preview of the full white paper outlines what best practices to employ in a rapidly changing landscape. It identifies challenges for MMM veterans and ways to meet them. It also introduces executives to the opportunities that exist when introducing MMM into their firm. The report preview provides a brief overview of the top-level findings found in the full report, which is only available to MSI members.

• Creative & Branded Content
• Article

Brands Should Do More to Protect Their Image Online, Study Shows

• Journal of Advertising Research

Brand safety is a hot topic in programmatic advertising, which is lauded for its efficient distribution but comes with big risks—particularly the unfiltered placement of digital ads next to negative content. New research offers empirical evidence of such risks, including damage to consumers’ perceptions, and calls for brands to do more to protect themselves.

• 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.