Measurement and effectiveness · Episode 101 · Season 5 · ·
The Fourth Wave
Edwin Wong, Global Head of Measurement at Uber Advertising, on why context and consumer control matter more than data volume, and why brand impact is easy to measure but hard to break through.
Edwin Wong, Global Head of Measurement, Uber Advertising. In conversation with John Horsley.
The Fourth Wave
0:0033:00A career at the intersection of media research and marketing effectiveness, from a UK-born brand consultancy to a decade at Yahoo, then Pinterest, BuzzFeed and Vox Media, and now Uber Advertising. Wong argues that context and consumer control now matter more than raw data volume, and that a utility able to see the sale changes what measurement can prove.
Wong started as a psychology major trying to understand people, then joined Holland Partners, a consultancy born out of the UK, where as the youngest person in Los Angeles he worked on brands and communications for the likes of Yahoo and eBay in the early 2000s. That led into roughly a decade at Yahoo looking after the search business from a marketing and research perspective. He moved to Pinterest to build out its business analytics practice as the company began connecting with advertisers and thinking about how the digital space affects the physical one. Over the following decade he worked at journalism companies, BuzzFeed and Vox Media, where he became passionate about how content and information flow with consumers by way of podcasts. He now leads global measurement at Uber Advertising, a platform he describes as connective commerce.
In this conversation with host John Horsley, Wong argues that the industry is drowning in metrics while missing what matters, which is context. He describes a fourth wave of media where the digital experience has to create consumer control, and he claims Uber cuts through fragmentation because it delivers on a real need rather than an endless feed. He says brand impact is not hard to measure, it is hard to break through, and points to attention and brand studies to make the case. He is wary of AI flattening expertise, warning that new tools make everyone a researcher while the craft of asking the right question and curating good data still matters. Deliver on the need, not the feed.
Many marketers still struggle to answer what's driving growth. Why is that so difficult?
“I think we're entering into the fourth wave, where the digital experience has to create consumer control”
Growth comes back to context and changing media behaviour. The first 50 of the last 70 years were about leaning back, and advertisers capitalised on what we watched. With mobile we leaned in through the device and the feed. Over the last 10 years, gaming, the metaverse and augmented reality made it about being inside it. Now we're entering the fourth wave, where the digital experience has to create consumer control, and a utility like Uber is instant enough to impact real life. It's hard because the way consumers interact with media changes so often.
Why is brand impact so hard to measure?
“It's probably not hard to measure. It's hard to break through.”
I'd push back and say it's not hard to measure, it's hard to break through. Working with Adelaide, we built a custom ad unit. Our ads perform about 40 percent better on attention than other digital inventory, and across hundreds of Kantar studies our brand consideration scores were around a 10 percent lift, roughly three times the global average. We correlated attention with brand scores so chief marketing officers can see the consumer both implicitly and explicitly, which gave us a new way to talk about brand.
Has the role of research inside marketing organisations changed?
“Understanding why a consumer actually connects with a platform”
It has, because the consumer changes so rapidly. But fundamentally I believe in understanding why a consumer connects with a platform and with media. Podcasts rose because people craved a break from the endless feed and wanted depth from trusted voices. In the wave of AI, consumers are looking for more human connection and pushing back for a reason, like the Luddites who were artisans defending their connection to the trade. Research is fascinating because we have to understand the chaos and connect authentically.
Put yourself forward or recommend a guest for us to consider.
Request an interview →Most companies try to reach senior decision makers. We give them a reason to engage.
Partner with Us →Have your say.Add your voice to the conversation.
Voices is where senior practitioners share what they're seeing, what they believe and what they'd change.
Become a Voice →One marketing buzzword the industry should retire?
“It's about the human, not the actual model”
AI. Artificial intelligence should maybe be accelerated intelligence or augmented intelligence, or flipped to intelligence augmented, because it's about the human, not the model.
Knowing the location opens up hyperlocal relevance. How powerful is that signal?
“Nothing, uh, says events like your source destination”
Source destination is a powerful signal, and Uber has it in spades. Brands want to be around events, and nothing says events like your source destination, a concert, a game, a night out. If you treat it as a signal, a chief marketing officer can connect with a fan going to a place without paying the premium to be around the content. Given how many places we deliver people to, the opportunities are pretty limitless.
Never miss an episode. Follow Business of Marketing.
