The Advertising Research Foundation: How advertising works today #ReThink16

Last Wednesday morning, I got the opportunity to attend The Advertising Research Foundation event Re!Think 2016 (part of the benefits of being a BIC student).
I can say the experience was beyond interesting. People from different backgrounds in the industry gather together with analytics experts to present original insights and success stories. 

The conversation started introducing the top 15 “winning paper” presentations (15 different topics from mobile and social measurement to neuroscience and video games). What I like about the event from the very beginning is how dynamic and unconventional it is. Each guest speaker had only 5 minutes to deliver their research which kept the audience all the time interested and wanting for more.

“Complexity reigns. Clearly there has never been a more important time in the history of advertising to make sense of it all” - Gayle Fuguit CEO & President The ARF.


One of the most interesting take aways, comes from Steven Rosenblatt (President at Foursquare) who discussed about the debate on how to monetize data. Steven described some critical case studies and how right decisions at the right time can make the difference in business to grow or disappear of the equation. 
“Invest in technology that you believe in rather than companies that you believe in”
Examples of this particular statement are the current situation of companies like Yellowcab versus Uber and the tremendous fail of Blockbuster versus Netflix.
The former Apple executive, also mentioned the importance of make bets on people when building a team, and how companies need to start thinking about a “rock band” model where there’s no superstar but instead a team working towards achieving communal goals.

Another presentation that personally surprised me due to their recent findings was “Evaluating TV Effectiveness in a Changed Media Landscape”. Olga Casabona (Senior Director of Client Insights at Turner) and Isaac Webber (VP Strategy at Marketshare) talked about the 3 main insights from the company’s research around how to retain customers.
  1. TV Remains the most effective advertising medium (with the highest impact on sales)
  2. Media mix matters (too heavy digital plans drive decreases of 7%)
  3. Premium content also matters (driving higher ROI than non-premium despite less number of impressions)
As one of their final thoughts, the executives highlighted the fact of leveraging TV’s synergistic impact on other marketing vehicles. 


When talking about brand content and how to make this content shareable, Jess Halter (Senior Research Analyst at IPG Media Lab) and Kara Manatt (VP Consumer Research Strategy at IPG Media Lab) showed the results of their latest research project, where we could confirm (or change or minds) about what do we think makes people engage with campaigns on the digital scenario.

“People expect 3 elements in social media content, they want it to be entertaining, uplifting and also educational” - Kara Manatt

Going further in describing how to make digital campaigns effective, both speakers went over specifics like how branded content performs better in quality websites and how significant it is to clearly establish a connection between the content and your brand. They also discusses the topic of the perfect Ad length, agreeing on the fact that short ads with short content equals big impact.


One of the last conferences of the session was “Personalizing the Spotify Experience Through Data” by Alex Underwood (VP, Head, Global Agency & Accounts). The executive of the music streaming service, presented the company’s strategy to curate playlists for their free and premium subscribers. Although categorizing an artist is important, for Spotify knowing when and where people listens to music is even more relevant. 

Thanks to the collaboration of their users (access to Facebook and twitter), the app has been able to go deeper into their consumption habits, getting to know the specifics of their moods and as a result curating personalized sets of music based on each profile information. “Discover Weekly” is not a new feature, but it has gained popularity in the last couple of months due to its accuracy when recommending new music on the platform.  

- Kenneth G. Bracho

Location: New York, NY, USA

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