• by Joe Mandese , June 14, 2016

The Advertising Research Foundation kicked off its annual Audience Measurement Conference in New York City Monday with a focus on time. Specifically, how consumers experience advertising sequentially and over time. And how fast the ad industry can get up to speed on the way those experiences are evolving in an increasingly fragmented, cluttered and multiple media world.

To illustrate the speed of change, ARF CEO and President Gayle Fuguitt kicked things off by noting that if the industry were to come up with a solution for tackling fraudulent “non-human traffic” on Monday, “by tomorrow [non-human traffic perpetrators] would figure out a way around it.”

“That’s pretty scary," she said, explaining why the industry -- and the ARF as its research authority -- needs to accelerate its cycles of research innovation to keep up with it.

Noting that this week’s audience measurement conference comes only three months after the ARF’s big annual ReThink conference, where ground-breaking insights about consumer persuasion were also unveiled, Fuguitt outlined an agenda for this week’s conference that focused on far more than simple audience measurement, but on the effectiveness with which consumers experience advertising while consuming media across platforms -- specifically, the concept of “sequencing” messages to ensure they hit the right person, at the right time, in the right medium and in the right order.

Citing new research being presented this week, Fuguitt said new insights have revealed how media perform individually and in conjunction to achieve that, but implied that more needs to be understood. “Is it television first? Is it mobile? Is it digital,” she said, introducing Manuel Garcia-Garcia, senior vice president-research & innovation, global & ad effectiveness at the ARF, who -- after leading attendees in a brief moment of silence recognizing the victims of the Orlando terrorist attack -- presented top line findings illustrating why the ARF is so focused on advertising sequencing.

“Context counts and timing is everything,” he said, drawing on the ARF’s “Neuro Insight” report showing how ad campaigns work better when they customized for each medium and are sequenced across media over time. That said, he cited a Millward Brown study indicating that only 38% of campaigns currently utilize creative customized explicitly for each media platform.