Marketing and Research Consulting for a Brave New World
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Dear marketing researchers: are you preparing for the day when your main media measurement approaches will completely break down in a cross-media world?

Consider a basic question like, “How well is my TV advertising working?”  That used to be a straightforward question to answer. On the exposure side of the equation, it was easy to measure GRPs, TRPs, and reach and frequency in accepted ways. Campaign trackers of copy recall and use of marketing mix models were standard plays in the research playbook and well understood by marketing.

Today, even the question itself is breaking down as video advertising is cross-platform and no longer synonymous with TV advertising.  Furthermore, online video can be served programmatically, using much more precise targeting than demographics.  In fact, the audience for video advertising is no longer completely owned by a media company.  It is accumulated via individual impressions served to users who meet certain targeting criteria.  Audiences now live at the intersection of profiling data, marketer algorithms and the ad-tech ecosystem. In this new world, reach and frequency calculations are no longer push button as we haven’t yet fully figured out how to link users across devices. The impact is more complicated to model than regression models can handle because the consumer is not in the regression equation (literally) yet the consumer is the basis of the decision to serve an ad impression in a programmatic world.

So, we find ourselves looking for a new playbook for audience measurement and effectiveness modeling.  To move towards this new playbook, I am leading a panel discussion at the IIeX conference in Atlanta Monday morning June 15.  My panelists will be Howard Shimmel, Chief Research Officer, Turner Broadcasting and Rex Briggs, founder of Marketing Evolution.

Here is an excerpt of my interview with IIeX about the upcoming session.

What are you going to be talking about at IIeX?

JR: The measurement challenge in a cross-media world. Measurement sciences is falling behind on its ability to measure audience reach across platforms and how to determine the ROI of an explosion of marketing levers in a context of new organizing rules for media. For example, it is fast becoming true that TV vs. digital is not the organizing principle but that video across TV and digital, delivered via a combination of negotiated deals and programmatic rules is how video advertising will work. Yet, while we can measure TV, we are still struggling to measure cross-platform video audiences.

What are some takeaways from your session?

JR: What the state of the art is regarding audience measurement, ROI assessment, what the remaining gaps are that are high priority to address and how they might be tackled.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

JR: Starting with my days as the Chief Research Officer at the Advertising Research Foundation, I see a new world where the rules of marketing are fundamentally changed. I have been in my own consulting business since 2010, helping 40 clients who are embracing this transformation to create new research approaches that bring together the data and analytics from surveys and the digital ecosystem so that insights can now drive action in real time. To date, I am proud to have created the largest listening platform in CPG, new approaches to marketing ROI assessment, worked with AOL and LRW to create a path to purchase framework to media planning and brand health assessment, created new passive digital metrics for Moat that are widely used in the digital advertising ecosystem, created new global brand tracking systems for a leading CPG, and created new frameworks for how to measure media and brand success in a digital, social, and mobile age. I believe my next big areas of impact with be changing how marketing works by blending ROI assessment and real time adjustment, research tools that enable experience-based marketing, using social media as a legitimate replacement for much of what is in a brand tracker survey, integrating digital and survey data, and creating a Moneyball approach to new product forecasting.

What are you hoping to get out of IIeX?

JR: The conference attracts the leading innovators and disruptors. I want to connect with the best of the best, extend relationships and continually drive myself to stay at or above a rising watermark. I pride myself at being one of the industry thought leaders who make change happen, but you can’t be a thought leader in the isolation booth. IIeX is the place to air out ideas, capabilities and level re-set.

For the full interview, click here.

To register for this conference, click here.

I hope to see you in Atlanta!  Please e-mail me at joel@rubinsonpartners.com if you would like to connect.

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