Sponsor Impact report governed by technology, not by curation. Kokoszka also predicts that automation will bring insight back up to the C-level within organisations. Before the internet, the only data a chief customers came from the market research function, so it was absolutely integral into major business decisions, he says. Now, I challenge any head of insight to tell me that they spend any time with the global chief shift towards personalisation and fragmentation of peoples attention. Consumers are using multiple channels and they their privacy to be protected, and for products and services to be tailored to their needs, so brands have had to adapt, says Dunbar. Marketing as a discipline has become considerably more data-led in recent years, with marketers having access to automated digital tools in marketing and management (CXM) is currently one of the biggest areas in technology investment. Market research, while it has always played a really critical role in informing decision-making, remains that is being recalculated while they are having a very disconnected and very analogue, for the most strategic discussion. part, says Dunbar. Thats never been possible before. So I think Research has been digitised with automation is very powerful to make online research, but the operations and insights people more important. processes used to fulfil that research, particularly of data collection, are mostly To deliver fieldwork Changing consumer still very analogue. There is lots of manual within six hours, quick behaviour access to research-ready human intervention and there are lots of human beings doing very repetitive tasks. of enterprise solutions at Cint, joined respondents is a must The fieldwork and the recruitment of the company five years ago. For the respondents, the sampling and fieldwork first couple of years, more than half process that is fundamentally where things tend to of his time was spent convincing some customers that fall apart. Theres an enormous bottleneck in the change was coming and they needed to be ready to system. If that doesnt work or isnt as optimised as it adapt. However, in the past three years, he says, that should be, the entire process falls to the lowest has changed. common denominator. I no longer need to have that conversation. Customers fully recognise that change is happening and that they need to understand how to capitalise on The need for speed that, not just cope with it. It has been a challenge for the industry for quite The shift is driven by changes in consumer some time: clients want speedier access to insight, behaviour, says Dunbar. The way people interact with a trend that has only accelerated as a result of the brands and technology has changed in the past few economic and behavioural uncertainties caused by years and then again in the past 18 months during the pandemic. the pandemic. While the impact of the latter is still yet to be hours, and its a very large audience in numerous fully understood, its likely to have accelerated the countries, having quick access to research-ready He envisages a world where the head of insight Advertising automation In the advertising industry, the eschew these traditional processes in including digital out-of-home traditional approach of buying media order to procure large volumes of advertising billboards. space includes requests for proposals, advertising inventory, often at lower tenders, manual insertion orders, prices and at scale. quotes, and a lot of human negotiation. Initially focused on online banner While programmatic software is used to replace some tasks historically handled by humans, people are still ads, programmatic software is required to create and optimise machines and algorithms to allow increasingly being used in advertising campaigns and to plan advertisers and their representatives to other parts of the media ecosystem, marketing strategies. Programmatic buying uses 22 Impact ISSUE 34 2021_pp21-29_Report.indd 22 18/06/2021 16:51