New MarketCast Ad Effect Express solution combines human research with proprietary AI to better predict advertising performance

Culver City, Calif. – Sept. 25, 2024 – Marketing research and intelligence company MarketCast today launched MarketCast Ad Effect Express, an innovative new advertising testing solution that brings together the power of human research with AI to better predict how TV, CTV, and digital advertising will perform across different audience segments.

Typical advertising testing is either survey-driven, with people watching ads and responding to researcher questions, or powered by AI models to predict human reactions with little human input. The human-powered research is in-depth but often expensive and slow. And the AI-powered models are speedy but often built upon narrow, outdated research. MarketCast Ad Effect Express combines the best of both worlds, delivering speed, scale, and accuracy, with cost efficiencies.

“Many of today’s AI-powered ad testing solutions sacrifice quality for speed by cutting humans out of the process,” said John Batter, CEO of MarketCast. “At MarketCast, we believe AI should amplify the voice of consumers in advertising research, not replace them. That's why MarketCast Ad Effect Express gives advertisers a smarter, faster, and more cost-effective way to test ads—without losing the power of the human connection.”

Looking under the hood, MarketCast Ad Effect Express is powered by the company's proprietary Audience AI, which uses fresh survey data as a foundation to train the AI models to amplify audience size and predict how real people will react to advertising. This allows advertisers to capture the subtle nuances of human opinions that AI solutions alone could miss. It also gives them access to hard-to-reach audiences without the heavy costs associated with obtaining audience sample.

MarketCast Ad Effect Express delivers ad testing research within 24-48 hours of submission and features facial and eye tracking to pinpoint second-by-second emotional reactions to ad creative. Additionally, it allows for responses to open-ended questions, which provides more context about advertising predictions, telling brands the reasons why (or why not) their ad creative will perform well once it’s in front of consumers.

MarketCast Ad Effect Express is now available. To learn more, contact us.

Fusing big data with traditional research methodologies to help brands identify, grow, and nurture Brand Fandom

Los Angeles, Calif. – September 20, 2023 – Data-driven insights and research company MarketCast today launched MarketCast Brand Tracking+™, an innovative new research solution that aims to transform how traditional brand research is conducted by the world’s top brands. Through the fusion of consumer data, ad performance data, and an industry-first Brand Fandom framework, MarketCast Brand Tracking+ will help marketers better understand how their brand performance is shifting and its direct impact on the businesses’ bottom line.

Today, practically every major brand conducts brand health research, representing billions of dollars in annual marketing spending. Despite this, brand tracking methodologies have hardly changed in decades, often looking back instead of forward and relying too much on consumer surveys while ignoring available big datasets. Now, MarketCast Brand Tracker+ changes the game. By combining behavioral data, such as Search, Smart TV, Social, and Purchases, with advertising performance data and survey research, Brand Tracking+ helps marketers pinpoint why shifts in brand performance are happening and what actions they can take with their marketing campaigns to pivot.

“The bringing together of big datasets with survey-based research will transform traditional brand tracking research from playing a passive role in the marketing organization to being a powerful signal for understanding marketing effectiveness,” said John Batter, CEO of MarketCast. “With MarketCast Brand Tracking+, we are finally connecting the dots between what people think and say about brands in traditional research surveys to how they engage with them in the real world and in real-time through product purchases and other conversions. Combined, this provides CMOs a powerful view into how brand performance directly impacts the marketing and sales funnel.”

At its core, MarketCast Brand Tracking+ features an innovative Brand Fandom research model and scoring methodology that identifies the key drivers of Brand Fandom. According to MarketCast’s research, fans of brands are six times more likely to pay more for that brand’s products and services and 15 times more likely to advocate for them. In addition, when brands have public missteps or ship products that miss the mark, which they occasionally do, brand fans are eight times more likely to remain loyal and even defend them.

“Fandom is every brand’s superpower, and every brand wants fans, whether they are a multi-billion-dollar beverage maker or a software supplier,” said Edward Trujillo, senior vice president of Brand Solutions at MarketCast. “MarketCast Brand Tracking+ helps brands create a roadmap for building Brand Fandom by identifying the factors influencing it, from people’s passions and emotional connections for their favorite brands to how they engage with and advocate for them daily.”

MarketCast Brand Tracking+ focuses on three core drivers of brand fandom, including:

1. Brand Presence in the market.
2. Brand Distinction in its category and among competitors.
3. Brand Relevance to the lives of the audiences it serves.

These Fandom drivers are supported by more than 40 additional inputs, gathered through consumer surveys, and then connected to millions of behavioral datapoints to understand how fans are engaging with the brands in real-time. Together, this forms the basis for a single MarketCast Fandom Score that marketers can compare over time with their competitors and across other brand categories, while also playing a role in predicting future brand performance.

MarketCast Brand Tracking+ is now available. To learn more, contact us.

Kantar Sales and Commercial Leader joins MarketCast to Grow its Research and Advertising Measurement Business in the Technology Sector

Los Angeles, Calif. – August 24, 2023 – Data-driven insights and research company MarketCast today announced Marisa McMahon is joining the company as its newest commercial leader supporting its technology portfolio. In this role, McMahon will be responsible for growing the company’s research and advertising solutions with the world’s top technology providers, including video games publishers, software and hardware makers, and tech platforms.   

“With technology innovation happening at an unprecedented pace, it's critical that our tech clients have a research partner who can help them navigate shifting consumer beliefs and behaviors,” said John Batter, CEO of MarketCast. “Having spent much of her career as a researcher and client service leader for the world’s biggest tech brands, Marisa knows what it takes to deliver research programs that bring value to marketers in this space, and we are thrilled to have her lead this effort.”

McMahon comes to MarketCast with more than 20 years of research experience, ranging from traditional brand and audience research to advertising copy testing and tracking. She joins MarketCast from Kantar, where she held a range of senior leadership positions, from leading client development and strategy to driving major technology accounts. McMahon began her career at Millward Brown where she spent more than 15 years building its successful U.S. practice. 

“The opportunity to join MarketCast at this pivotal stage in the company’s transformation, where I can make a real impact, is truly exciting,” said McMahon. “I look forward to partnering with MarketCast’s incredible researchers and commercial teams to discover new ways to help technology marketers gain a deeper understanding of their audiences, measure the impact of their strategies, and build and nurture fandom for their products, services, and brands.”

McMahon comes to MarketCast during a time of rapid transformation and innovation. The company recently launched its cross-platform Brand Effect™ advertising measurement solution which aims to be the standard for measuring ad recall and resonance across CTV, Linear TV, Streaming, and Social. Additionally, the company’s qualitative and quantitative research is trusted by the biggest names in technology, entertainment, and sports to help them understand the business landscape, identify which audiences to prioritize, and build brand fandom up and down the marketing funnel.

Former Criteo sales leader joins MarketCast to grow and evolve sales leadership team

Los Angeles, Calif. – April 12, 2023 – Data-driven insights and research company MarketCast today announced Debra Meyer is joining the company as its Chief Revenue Officer. In this role, Meyer will lead all commercial sales efforts and will be responsible for driving sales strategy and opportunities across its Research and Ad Solutions businesses.

Meyer joins MarketCast with decades of experience leading sales teams at top ad tech, research, and software companies. Most recently, Meyer was Vice President of Agency Development at Criteo, a global advertising data and commerce platform. While there, she led the sales teams responsible for driving opportunities with the world’s leading advertising agencies on behalf of their brand clients. Earlier in her career, she spent more than a decade at Nielsen managing the sales efforts for the online digital research side of the business in addition to holding leadership positions at Microsoft and Salesforce.

“Bringing together our sales teams under Debra’s leadership will help us supercharge our approach to client service, account planning, and sales team training and development,” said John Batter, CEO of MarketCast. “Debra’s experience leading large commercial teams in the ad tech and research space will help us better shape the future of our commercial strategy to win new clients and grow existing ones - all in support of achieving our annual growth plans.”

Meyer joins MarketCast during a time of growth and rapid product innovation. The company recently launched its cross-platform Brand Effect™ advertising measurement solution which aims to be the standard for measuring ad recall and resonance across CTV, Linear TV, Streaming, and Social. Additionally, the company’s qualitative and quantitative research is trusted by the biggest names in entertainment, technology, sports, and consumer products to measure brand fandom and engagement at every stage of the marketing funnel.

“What drew me to MarketCast was the company’s reputation for exceptional client service and research delivery as well as its vision to transform advertising research and measurement through advanced AI and data analytics,” said Meyer. “Developing sales cultures that put the customer first is what I’m most passionate about and I look forward to helping transform MarketCast’s commercial efforts to support the needs of our brand and advertising clients as their businesses and audiences continue to evolve.”

Partnership with VIZIO’s Inscape enables MarketCast’s Brand Effect to measure advertising performance on CTV

Los Angeles, Calif. – March 23, 2023 – Data driven insights and research company MarketCast today announced that it is expanding its Brand Effect™ advertising measurement platform to support the changing way audiences are engaging with media and entertainment across platforms. Long considered an industry standard for measuring advertising resonance on linear TV, MarketCast Brand Effect now provides advertisers a holistic view of how ad creative is breaking through and driving memorability with audiences across CTV, streaming and social media.

As part of its new Brand Effect launch, MarketCast has partnered with Inscape, the leading currency-grade Smart TV ACR data provider and the data technology division of VIZIO, to measure the impact of advertising across CTV streaming services. MarketCast will identify audiences exposed to CTV ads on Smart TVs to determine whether viewers can recall ads accurately, connect them to the right brand and whether ads are influencing the purchase of the advertiser’s products and services. In short, Brand Effect will help marketers understand if their CTV ads are hitting the mark with audiences.

“With CTV experiencing massive growth both in viewership and ad spending, it’s critical our Brand Effect platform evolves to support advertisers and their measurement needs everywhere they need to be,” said John Batter, CEO of MarketCast. “We are thrilled to bring the most innovative version of our ad resonance measurement to market with Inscape’s leading TV viewing data. The Inscape team pioneered Smart TV measurement technology, delivering glass-level insights that provide advertisers greater visibility into how their ad creative is performing across CTV services.”

“We’re excited to expand our partnership with MarketCast to include Inscape’s cutting edge streaming ad detection solution. Doing so gives MarketCast an ability to achieve their goal of providing higher-fidelity data and insights to advertisers seeking to capitalize on the opportunity that exists within the CTV ecosystem,” said Ken Norcross, VP Data Licensing & Insights, VIZIO. “By way of the most robust, representative and reliable source for Smart TV data in America, Marketcast will now be able to help drive key upper funnel metrics that CMOs find critical to inform their ad strategy and creative decisions.”

MarketCast is also partnering with major broadcasters and streamers to measure the impact of entertainment content and platforms on advertising resonance. In addition to having its Brand Effect measurement solution certified by NBCU’s Ads and Partnerships team, MarketCast and NBCU recently introduced a new Content Quality Index (CQI) to identify how entertainment content and advertising environments drive advertising resonance with audiences across platforms. The two companies will be trialing Brand Effect’s new Resonance Ratings™ feature with advertisers and other measurement providers through the end of the year.

The Brand Effect cross-platform solution represents the first new advertising measurement product MarketCast has launched following its acquisition of Phoenix Marketing International (PMI) last year. It combines an always-on survey engine, which connects with more than 15,000 people daily, with advanced data science to measure audience feedback about ad and brand recall, ad likeability and intent to purchase. The system is designed to be interoperable with existing measurement systems from leading providers, allowing media sellers and buyers to use traditional systems to measure audience reach and frequency, while at the same time, using MarketCast Brand Effect to measure advertising resonance – without conflict.

About MarketCast
MarketCast research, analytics and data science fuels fandom for leading studios, entertainment platforms, sports, and lifestyle brands. Our unique mix of research analytics is combined with big data science to provide clients powerful insights to inform their biggest business decisions. Today, MarketCast counts some of the biggest advertisers and brands as clients, including leading Hollywood studios, streaming services, video games publishers, tech platforms, lifestyle brands and sports leagues.

About Inscape
Inscape is a leading provider of currency-grade ACR data and the technology division of VIZIO Holding Corp. (NYSE: VZIO). Inscape’s TV intelligence platform powers incredible experiences for TV viewers, market leading products for VIZIO advertisers and is fueling the transformation in America’s TV measurement industry. The automated content recognition (ACR) pioneer generates screen-level accurate and robust, always-on data feeds containing every second of TV viewing, giving media companies, agencies, brands and measurement providers the intelligence to modernize, optimize and revolutionize the TV and streaming marketplace. Founded in 2008 as TV Interactive Systems, Inc. and later acquired by VIZIO in 2015, Inscape operated as a wholly-owned subsidiary based in San Francisco, California until 2020 when it was integrated into VIZIO’s Platform+ Business.