The ARF tested whether generative AI can adopt executive personas and provide credible, role-specific strategies. This experiment highlights how AI performs when “thinking like” organizational leaders, its limitations in institutional logic and feasibility, and how human-in-the-loop feedback can refine outputs and create nuanced and worthwhile results.
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How do advertising agencies respond to different incentive structures? This study investigates the question, showing how competitive reviews and pay-for-performance models influence creativity and campaign outcomes.
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This is a report on the third in a series of surveys conducted by the ARF Organizational Insights Council on the evolving terrain of the analytics and insights profession. Drawing from interviews with over 400 professionals across ARF member companies, the study provides a deep dive into skill trends, structural shifts, AI adoption and sector-based investment in research and analytics.
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A new study uncovers how advertising agencies are attempting to integrate generative AI into their creative workflows, and the repercussions of that process. Based on interviews and field data, the research presents a four-phase model—readiness, co-creativity, validation and execution. Although the study reveals certain anxieties surrounding this integration, in the end both human and AI elements together are required to boost and enliven the creative process.
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This report offers an abridged version of the cumulative 2025 AI handbook, exploring the benefits, limitations and dangers of generative AI models when employed in various tasks associated with marketing and advertising research. This report sums up the insights from several experiments where ARF researchers tested AI's capabilities in survey design, sentiment analysis, coding open-ended responses, language translation and addressing AI risks.
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The ARF Member AI workshop introduced members to the potentialities of various AI platforms and tools to boost their work productivity. The workshop covered how LLMs such as Copilot, ChatGPT, Gemini and Claude can be employed in three main areas: presentations and reports, advertising research and meetings. Issues such as privacy and security of using AI, as well as the current limitations and challenges of the technology were also discussed. The hands-on, interactive workshop was an opportunity for all those interested in best practices and guidelines for using AI to learn how to interweave such programs into their daily work processes.
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Data-driven marketing presents opportunities but also many challenges for managing creativity and creative teams. A new study offers a roadmap for managers at agencies to be more strategic in the creative integrated marketing communications process by rethinking the distribution and valuation of creativity.
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The 2020 US census revealed that the United States is far more diverse and multiracial today than ever before in its history. Approximately 38% of the population belong to racial minority groups. The trend is expected to continue, which has resulted in companies increasing their focus on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), both internally and in their marketing efforts. In order to inform member companies of where we are as an industry, as well as to offer best practices and actionable insights in their own DEI efforts, the ARF has put together The Diversity Report.
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Does the digital environment support or constrain advertising creativity? The answer is both. But how? Researchers in Australia relied on two seminal methods—the rigorous Delphi recruitment method through which research queried creative experts worldwide, and the Four P’s model of creativity. These were applied to investigate “place” (the digital environment) and its impact on the remaining P's: process, person and product. What they found was that technology both enhances and represses creativity.
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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.
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