Over the past year, iSpot has continued its game-changing momentum by striking key partnerships, enhancing its products suite and maintaining transparency by releasing insights and reports featuring deep dives into both ads and content.
We’ve also made key talent decisions as well – by hiring notables like Jodie McAfee and Will Waldron – in order to blaze a path toward modernized TV measurement and currency for our brand, agency and network customers. After all, it’s mission critical that every second of TV advertising is verified across platforms and that all audiences are accurately accounted for.
To that end, we’re thrilled to announce a trailblazer of the TV advertising industry, Leslie Wood, has joined our ranks as Chief Research Officer!
Leslie has had a storied career in media research and along with welcoming her to iSpot, we also want to congratulate her for recently winning the prestigious Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Award – the second woman to win this award in 80 years!
iSpot Hires Advertising Research Pioneer Leslie Wood as Chief Research Officer
Bellevue, WA – July 27, 2023 – iSpot, the TV measurement company, today announced Leslie Wood, the data science leader and advertising expert, has joined the company as its Chief Research Officer. In this role, Wood will lead new currency initiatives across linear and streaming and oversee the data science department responsible for always-on TV and video measurement products trusted by 600+ brands, including 40 of TV’s top 50 advertisers.
Wood comes to iSpot after a long time partnership at Media Trust LLC and Leslie Wood Research, where she spearheaded research into internet reach and frequency, market mix modeling, radio listening patterns and TV reach optimization among other crucial industry flashpoints for major advertisers. A multi-decade veteran with a PHD in machine learning, Wood is credited with accelerating innovation in brand measurement, notably for her tenure as Chief Data Officer for NCSolutions (NCS) where she spent over a decade developing new approaches to using data for incremental measurement and targeting and oversaw innovation for all NCS products.
In her new role at iSpot, Wood will drive the development of products, solutions and methodologies that underpin iSpot’s industry-leading cross-platform measurement suite as well as bring an unrivaled and innovative approach to currency measurement – a long sought after industry need that legacy measurement approaches have often failed to deliver on.
“My passion for decades has been empowering consumer brands with better measurement and data science to deliver greater return on investments that can deliver better products and services for everyday people,” said Wood. “Putting my passions to work for iSpot gives me an opportunity not just to innovate at the measurement platform of choice for brands but to help ensure the very same metrics brands use to justify, optimize TV investments can also be the metrics they transact upon.”
Wood was just awarded the 2023 American Marketing Association’s prestigious Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Award for her achievements helping brands understand the business and brand impact of advertising. Wood is in esteemed company. She is the first woman in 30 years, and only the second woman in 80 years to receive this award. Past winners of this award include research luminaries like marketing pioneer Paul Nystrom, pollster George Gallup and ad guru David Ogilvy. Wood has also received The 2019 Erwin Ephron Demystification Award, The 2016 Market Research Council Hall of Fame Award, The Advertising Research Foundation’s 2015 Great Minds Award and the 2016 Great Minds Award for best paper and the 2013 Worldwide Research Award for best paper.
“Leslie Wood has been recognized as one of the most respected names in the media industry. Her reputation as a collaborative, innovative leader and her achievements in ad research, patent creation and TV incrementality, among other things, will serve as the backbone for iSpot’s continued push forward on in order to provide the industry with a currency that can finally unlock the full potential of premium video that exists today for brands, agencies and publishers,” said Sean Muller, CEO and founder, iSpot. “We are thrilled to have her be part of the measurement revolution.”
Wood, who received a bachelor of science degree in Mathematics from Hunter College and earned a PhD in Information Science from the University of Albany (SUNY), has a well-known reputation for transparency. As an innovator in the field of advertising effectiveness, she developed and implemented contemporary measurement models and has done so in an open manner that benefits the larger media ecosystem. This transparency is a crucial facet to any measurement provider, system or leader.
What industry leaders are saying about Leslie Wood’s Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Award:
“I have known Leslie Wood for almost 40 years, from the earliest days of her career in research to the present day…Leslie has continued to develop research techniques, practices and concepts. One example is her development of an approach to understanding the role of the brand and brand advertising in advertising and media strategy, from a purely behavior perspective. Very solid, practical and valuable! I’m hard-pressed to think of anyone who has done more to develop and promote new concepts, methods, and models for measurement and analysis that expand the capacity of organizations to achieve a better understanding of their markets, customers, and consumers,” said Jim Spaeth, Partner, Sequent Partners.
“Leslie has been a true innovator in the science behind advertising effectiveness. She has reframed our thinking about advertising and has developed new tools, enabled by data and analysis, which are more effective to deploy and evaluate advertising. Leslie has developed new concepts and models for measurement, and importantly, she’s generously shared her ideas, methods and results with the wider media ecosystem,” said Joan Fitzgerald, CEO, Data ImpacX.
“I’ve had the opportunity to work with Leslie before NCS, beginning approximately 2001. Like many in the industry, I knew Leslie by reputation well before I became acquainted with her personally. Leslie and her work have had an outsized impact on understanding brand building and advertising effectiveness. Leslie has proven herself a collaborative leader as evidenced by her substantial body of publications and presentations. Colleagues across the industry look to Leslie for fresh ideas and approaches. She is generous with her time and relishes talent development. The good news for us all is that Leslie continues to ideate and analyze – and share. She is truly jazzed to help build a better understanding of our markets, customers and consumers,” said Linda Dupree, Former CEO, NCSolutions.