Article

• Future States & AI
• Article

When AI Becomes Part of the Consumer–Brand Relationship

• Psychology of GenAI
• ARF; MSI; 3 Standard Deviations

Generative AI is changing more than how consumers discover and compare brands. It is becoming an active participant in how they interpret brand information, evaluate alternatives and make purchasing decisions. The latest report in the ARF and MSI's Psychology of Gen AI series, The Third Actor: How AI Is Entering the Consumer–Brand Relationship, explores this emerging dynamic and what it could mean for marketers. Drawing on a survey of experienced AI users, the research examines how AI's personalized, conversational interactions may influence brand perceptions, consumer preferences and the relationship between brands and their customers.

• Research & Data Quality
• Article

What Buyers Want from Retail Media Measurement

• ARF

Retail media promises advertisers something especially valuable: the ability to connect advertising exposure with transaction data. But as campaigns expand across onsite, offsite and in-store environments, advertisers and agencies are finding that measurement remains difficult to compare, reconcile and evaluate. Based on an RFI with 13 buy-side organizations, this second phase of the ARF Retail Media Network Standardization Project examines how advertisers and agencies experience retail media measurement in practice — from incrementality and attribution to transparency, deduplication, in-store measurement and access to underlying data.

• Creative & Branded Content
• Article

How Emotions Travel Between TV Programs and Advertising

• JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH

Can the emotions viewers experience while watching television influence how they respond to commercials? And can advertising, in turn, shape their emotional reactions to the programs they watch? New research published in the Journal of Advertising Research examines this two-way relationship using biometric measurements and real-time audience feedback. Drawing on television viewing sessions across four countries, the study explores how emotional responses carry over between programs and advertisements, how commercial placement affects engagement and why certain programming genres may offer advertisers distinct advantages. The findings offer valuable insights for media planners, advertisers and broadcasters seeking to better understand the role of emotional context in advertising effectiveness.

• Future States & AI
• Article

How AI Recommendations Are Changing the Rules of Brand Growth

• ARF; MSI

What happens to brand growth when consumers increasingly turn to AI assistants instead of relying on familiar brands or traditional search results? As generative AI becomes a more influential part of product discovery and purchasing decisions, marketers face new questions about how brands gain visibility, enter consumers' consideration sets and compete for attention. In MSI Working Paper, Tri-System Brand Growth: The AI Mediation Layer, researcher Pablo Ulpiano González Castro introduces a framework that adds AI availability to the established concepts of mental and physical availability. Drawing on brand-growth theory, an experiment and cross-category measurement research, the paper examines how AI-generated recommendations may reinforce existing brand advantages or create new opportunities for competing brands, and what these changes mean for marketing strategy and brand measurement.

• Future States & AI
• Article

Beyond Visibility: What Makes Brands Discoverable Today?

• ARF; The Advertising Club of New York

Getting noticed is only the beginning. As consumers discover brands through search engines, social platforms, creators, retail environments and AI-powered tools, visibility alone no longer guarantees relevance or consideration. In her latest article for The Advertising Club of New York, Tracy Adams, PhD, Senior Director of Research & Insights at the ARF, examines how the changing discovery landscape is reshaping the relationship between brands and consumers. Drawing on recent ARF and industry research, she explores why recognition, relevance, credibility and trust are increasingly important to turning brand exposure into meaningful consumer engagement.

• Article

Is Your Synthetic Evidence Decision-Ready? A practical checklist for marketing research teams

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• Targets & Segments
• Article

The Engagement Limits of Value Led Brand Messaging

• JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH

Human values can help brands connect their communications to issues and ideals that matter to consumers, but stronger value expression does not always generate more engagement. An analysis of nearly 28,000 posts from 47 brands found that audience response varied by industry, value category and message characteristics. Fashion brands performed best with subtler value integration, while other sectors showed different patterns, indicating that brands must calibrate value-led messaging to their audience and context.

• Targets & Segments
• Article

How News Algorithms Redirect Traffic and Reshape Content

• ARF; MSI

News aggregators can exert substantial influence through the algorithms that determine which stories and sources receive prominent placement. An analysis of Russia’s Yandex News found that top-five homepage referrals drove large increases in outlet traffic, while an algorithm change that reduced exposure for independent outlets did not lead consumers to abandon the platform. Affected outlets subsequently changed how they wrote and packaged their news, showing that distribution algorithms can shape production as well as consumption.

• Future States & AI
• Article

How Generative Search Changes Shopping Decisions

• ARF; MSI

Generative search may help consumers move from broadly stated needs to more focused shopping decisions. In a field experiment involving more than 6.4 million users of Meituan—a Chinese e-commerce platform, consumers given AI-generated responses placed more orders and generated greater transaction value than those using a conventional keyword search. They also spent less time browsing and concentrated their attention on fewer, more relevant categories and merchants.

• Future States & AI
• Article

How AI Search Is Rewriting Consumer Search Behavior

• JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH

As consumers add AI-powered search engines to their information routines, their behavior changes with the platform and purpose of the search. An observational study of 848 real-world searches found that traditional search still dominated while AI-powered search was used more often for advice-seeking, drew substantially longer queries and produced fewer outbound clicks. The findings suggest that advertisers may need to rethink long-tail keyword strategies, website optimization and ad models as search behavior becomes divided across traditional and generative platforms.