The fusion of art and science drives stakeholder value, says Lauren Zweifler, Consultant and Former SVP Insights & Research, NBC Universal. Here, Zweifler shares her thoughts on achieving Brand Love.
Throughout your career, notably most recently at NBCU, you spoke a lot about the value of understanding the intersection of art and science. What is the value in that approach?
Art comes into play when visualizing the end deliverable – painting the picture. This involves seeing the holistic narrative, understanding how to illustrate the value of premium video content, interpreting the halo effect to advertisers, and connecting them better with consumers through content they love.
Science factors in determining the right research methodologies, identifying the necessary data, and applying analytics to build insights that substantiate these narratives.
The fusion of art and science is what ultimately drives stakeholder value— crafting a compelling vision that drives strategic storytelling, transforming insights into actionable strategies that fuel growth and alignment to business objectives.
Where does emotion play a role in monitoring and measuring content and advertising?
The goal of advertising is to connect consumers with products and services effectively. While quantitative data provides scale, qualitative insights reveal deeper consumer sentiment—essential for driving Brand Love.
With a consumer-centric approach, I’ve partnered with industry leaders to deliver best-in-class marketing insights that enhance advertiser success across the purchase funnel.
Keeping a consumer-centric mindset, I’ve partnered with leading companies to drive best in class marketing findings for advertisers to achieve success across the entire purchase funnel and uncover Brand Love. One example is Coherency which is connecting brands to contextually aligned content using brand and campaign briefs to enforce or build consumer connections to brands, generating the perfect marriage of brands, content and media. Another is Mediaprobe, which is using real-time environmental physiological technology that captures and quantifies consumer engagement to all forms of content, advertising and live events. This is done at scale and can validate or unlock insights around emotional connections. A third is ACTV8me, they are ultimately tying brand exposure to purchase using interactive AI-enabled monetization and ad effectiveness platform, true marketing exposure to purchase.
Do you see a difference between in home versus in lab media research or is it case by case?
It is case by case. The real world is important to understand the attention and even more importantly the engagement the viewer has to the content and advertising they are consuming when viewing in home.
The question becomes, where are people seeing advertising the most, where are they consuming content and ideally, that is where the testing should be done.
The benefit of in-lab research is that multiple methodologies can be tested at once, like heart rate, eye tracking, and brainwave fluctuations.
Everyone’s buzzword seems to be AI, and for good reason. What role does AI play in the evolution of research today?
In today’s world it’s AI + HI, Human Intelligence. That is art and science.
The science comes in when using AI to bring together disparate data sets and large data sets to shorten data compilation time, to be able to draw out insights more rapidly. Also, there are benefits to AI in writing more concisely and simplistically when trying to communicate in-depth methodologies and concepts to a wider audience.
What is the biggest trend we should look out for in the year ahead?
The content landscape of 2025 is set to be vibrant, offering a diverse mix of new and returning favorites across various genres. As a content enthusiast, I eagerly anticipate immersing myself in originally scripted shows, delving deep into their narratives and character developments. My forecast for 2025: abundant viewing and perhaps a bit less sleep.
In all seriousness, it’s the collective efforts of actors, writers, directors, marketers, and more that bring these programs to life. Their work elicits a spectrum of positive consumer emotions, sparking conversations around the water cooler and across social media platforms. These consumer connections extend beyond the content itself to the advertising that accompanies it.
Looking ahead, there will be an increased need for uniform sponsorship measurement—what I refer to as “marketing currency”—to replace disparate studies. Demonstrating the value for advertisers in aligning their brands with ad-supported programming, whether new or returning, is essential amid industry pressures to perform. Proving that authentic engagement between content and products drives full-funnel results and fosters greater consumer brand affinity in this data-driven ecosystem is key.
To hear more from Lauren, join us at CTV Connect next week where she will be appearing as a moderator for the panel, Linear TV vs. Streaming Debate.
