The Council voted at its second quarter meeting to fund two research projects proposed by the Media Consumption & Engagement Committee, chaired by Janet Gallent, SVP, NBC Consumer Insights & Innovation Research.

The first, "Decoding the Rosetta Stone of Modern Viewing," is a qualitative research project conducted by SoundHQ to better understand the terminology consumers use when talking about their TV viewing behaviors and other forms of media. Findings from this research are intended to improve self-report measurement by reducing the risk of inaccurate responses when the language used in self-report measures does not match the language used by respondents.

The second project is a comprehensive literature review by Industry veterans Betsy Frank and Tim Brooks that will result in two white papers designed to guide the CRE in its creation of an RFP for a study to help researchers better understand media usage throughout the day. The study resulting from the RFP will focus data collection and analysis on video, and quantify how media usage behavior has changed since the CRE's first Video Consumer Mapping Study (VCMS) in 2008.

The CRE will report out findings from its study, "Target Modeling Validation," at the Association of National Advertisers' Data & Measurement Conference scheduled for September 13-15 in Naples, FL.

The study's aim is to help bring transparency to the science of modeled consumer data. The study utilized data supplied by brand partner AIG Travel Insurance, recruited with assistance from the ANA, to examine how closely the modeled/lookalike targets developed by demand side platforms reflect marketers' true target audiences. The study was conducted for the CRE's Big Data Committee by Pre-Meditated Media.

Presenting at the ANA event will be Gerard Broussard, Principal, Premeditated Media; Newcombe Clark, Global Director, Rapid Learning Lab, AIG; and Stacey Schulman, EVP of Strategy & Analytics for Katz Media Group and Chair of the CRE's Big Data Committee.

The CRE chose to explore this issue because the use of modeled consumer data, which combines media audience data with consumer transactions to inform media targeting and measure ad effectiveness, has dramatically accelerated in recent years. Modeling is particularly prevalent in digital marketing, and its use is expected to become more pervasive in television.

Christine Pierce, SVP of Data Science at Nielsen, was voted onto the Council at its Q2 member meeting on June 15 in New York.

At Nielsen, Pierce leads a team of statistical, social, behavioral and computer scientists who support the company's TV, radio and digital measurement products. The team provides expertise in audience estimation, sampling, survey research, statistical modeling and organic/Big Data measurement.

Pierce joined Nielsen in 2002 as Director, Demographic Research. She later served as VP, Demographic Research; VP, Behavioral Methods; and VP, Audience Measurement Methods, before being named to her current position in 2015.