• by Charlene Weisler , Op-Ed Contributor, June 12, 2013

Mark Loughney, vice president of sales and strategy research for ABC, started in academia -- but customer satisfaction research interested him so much that he decided to transition into the business side of market research. That move resulted in a stellar career that has included stints at MTV Networks, TNN, Nielsen and ABC. In my interview with him, Mark talks about measurement, cross-platform, industry trends, the DIsney Media & Ad Lab, and future trends in the industry.

Below is an excerpt of the interview. Click here to see the complete videos.

CW: What are some of the projects that you are working on now at ABC?

ML: The bulk of what my department does here is custom research in support of our sales efforts, including the effectiveness of our platforms and our other offerings for advertisers. We do a lot of ad effectiveness research and message testing. We also look at the attractiveness of our audience for our advertisers, especially on the digital side.

And we do a lot of research surrounding consumption patterns of our audience or other demographic characteristics of our audience that make them attractive to advertisers. That is probably three quarters of what we do. Then there is a certain amount of research that is consumer insights research such as tablet adoption.

I think we were among the first to do research among iPad owners within the first year that the tablet was introduced. We did a lot of research on how people adopted them, what they were using them for, what it meant for our business. We are now looking at other platforms on which people use our content such as VOD and how it fits into their viewing options. We were really early with DVR research as well. So a lot of it is also consumer insights, technology adoption, but always with an eye toward what it means for the business.

CW: What research are you doing in the area of cross-platform?

ML: We have been lucky to be able to partner with some of our clients. We have done a couple of studies with agency clients that were presented at the recent ARF. Are there differences in the way ads perform across various platforms? We found, as a general rule, that regardless of screen size, most advertising performs equivalently because people tend to orient themselves to the size of the screen. They typically wear ear buds if they are looking at smaller screens so that the audio isn’t degraded. We have been able to repeat that result across time and platform.

We have also conducted some field research where there is no forced exposure as there is in a lab situation. Our current Total Touch study,  presented at the recent ARF, looked at how ads performed on ABC content across platform. We have been able to observe that if people see content on more than one platform, the ads tend to perform better. Our conclusion is that cross-platform is really advantageous for advertisers.