Research & Data Quality

When Language Becomes Targeting: How Gender Cues Shape AI Recommendations

  • Psychology of Gen AI
  • ARF; MSI; Iris Flex

As generative AI tools increasingly influence product discovery and decision-making, subtle cues in user language can shape what consumers are shown—and how options are framed. This second phase of the sixth study in the Psychology of Gen AI series examines how implicit and explicit gender signals affect AI-generated product recommendations, revealing systematic differences in categories, brand repetition, descriptive language and price information. The findings raise important questions for advertisers and researchers about bias, brand visibility and the growing cultural role of AI in shaping consumer norms.

Member Only Access

Why Synthetic Respondents Flatten Consumer Sentiment

  • Psychology of Gen AI
  • ARF; MSI

This fifth experiment in the Psychology of Gen AI series reveals that large language models apply a rigid, rule-driven logic when evaluating privacy scenarios—even when humans typically shift their reasoning based on framing, emotion and social context. Unlike consumers, who blend intuition, feeling and social perspective into their judgments, GPT-4o relied on a single internal rule across all testing conditions: data use is acceptable only with explicit consent. This consistency offers value for certain analytic tasks but exposes limits for advertising research that depends on emotional nuance and context-sensitive consumer insight.    

Member Only Access

In the Age of the ‘Modeled’ Sample: Can We Still Trust Polling?

  • Mark Blumenthal – Head of Election Polling, SurveyMonkey

The 2016 U.S. presidential election served a big blow to the polling community, as pre-election predictions proved to be dramatically wrong. But is there really a crisis in pre-election polling? Mark Blumenthal, Head of Election Polling at SurveyMonkey, summarizes the AAPOR’s post-election investigation that demonstrated the accuracy of national polls, but weaknesses in state-level polls. Part of the challenge going forward – correcting for sample bias in an age of lower survey response rates.

Member Only Access

The Organizational Benchmark Survey Database

  • THE ARF

Our first, annual benchmark survey looked into the dramatic changes that occurred in advertising and marketing research organizations from 2018-2019. We have delivered a series of reports: the advertiser, agency, research, media & entertainment and consultancy report. Now, the ARF has released the interactive access via a searchable database. Members can interrogate the data and findings themselves and query segmentations such as job title, category, structure, size and investment trends.

Member Only Access

Future State: Navigating the New Media Landscape (Event Summary)

  • LEADERSHIP LAB

There are a lot of questions surrounding how media is evolving, how viewers select content out of seemingly innumerable choices and how streaming services decide what to adopt. While several ARF events have tackled such questions, experts weighed in with their most recent insights at February’s Leadership Lab at ARF headquarters in New York City. Dubbed Future State: Navigating the New Media Landscape, the ARF’s CRO Paul Donato and EVP of Research and Innovation, Dr. Horst Stipp, co-chaired an event that dished out oodles of interesting insights. Editor’s Note: The full report is available to members only.

Member Only Access