What marketing effectiveness capability does not get the attention it deserves?
Test and learn. It sounds simple, but test and learn is one of the most powerful ways to build confidence in marketing decision-making. Measurement often focuses on explaining what happened, which is important, but test and learn helps clients understand what could happen next if they make a different choice.
What I like about it is that it turns marketing effectiveness into a more active discipline. Instead of waiting for results and then debating what drove them, clients can design experiments, read signals earlier and make smarter decisions with more confidence.
At Gain Theory, we used tools like Sensor™ to make that approach more scalable by connecting experimentation with broader effectiveness measurement. This enables test and learn to become part of how a client continuously improves performance rather than a one-off exercise.
Read more: Get Actionable Insights at Scale with Data-driven Experimentation
What are you most passionate about when it comes to working with brands?
One of my biggest passions is reducing the distance between data and insight. In analytics, there’s often a lot of effort spent moving data from one place to another, formatting outputs, checking charts, and packaging findings. All that work matters, but the real value comes when we can get to the “so what?” faster.
That’s why I have become a bit obsessed with automation or, as I sometimes describe it, my personal mission to abolish copy and pasting. The goal is not just to make things faster, but to free up more time for deeper thinking, better questions and more useful recommendations for clients.
How has AI changed your approach to that?
AI has made that mission more exciting, but also more nuanced. When generative AI first became widely available, I had a grand plan to train it on the way we generate insights and automate the whole process of turning data into commentary. Then I asked it to sum up a list of numbers, and it repeatedly got the answer wrong, which was a sobering reality check!
The lesson for me is that AI is incredibly powerful, but it must be used in the right way. Large language models are very good at language, synthesis, and pattern recognition, but we still need robust analytical environments to handle the calculations.
What is exciting now is the way more recent AI developments have incorporated scripting or querying shells to ‘outsource’ the math to more capable tools, which means we can generally trust the math. I’m excited to keep pushing the boundaries on this front to make insights and recommendations more available to our clients.
Where do you see AI creating new types of insight for marketers?
Creative effectiveness is a great example. Creative is such an important part of marketing performance, but historically it has been difficult to demonstrate this due in large part to the impossible task of manually tagging and cataloguing every creative asset across different formats and channels. Today, AI enables us to do this and turn granular creative features into structured data that can be connected to business outcomes.
In practical terms, that helps us move beyond simply asking which campaign performed best. We can start to understand what specific creative features (e.g. the characters, music, or calls to action) are associated with stronger performance. That is a powerful next step because it gives brands more actionable guidance on both creative development and media investment.
Read more: Four Key Takeaways from Creative Effectiveness Decoded: The Global CMO Survey
What are you passionate about outside of work?
As a parent of three young children, I’m an avid reader of books about parenting and relationships. I recently led a lunch and learn session called “Unsolicited Parenting Advice,” which was a chance to share some humorous parenting stories, as well as a few ideas I’ve found helpful in my journey.
One book I featured is Good Inside by Dr. Becky Kennedy. I like her concept of “two things are true”: a feeling can be completely real, even if it does not accurately reflect the situation. I also found helpful the idea that tantrums are a form of communication. It is a useful reminder that behavior is often the signal, not the root cause.
That’s probably the broader theme I find most interesting: resilience, communication, and how we create environments where people can respond better when things get hard. It is useful as a parent, of course, but also as a colleague, a manager and, frankly, as a person trying to get through airport delays with small children.
You’re based in Cleveland, Ohio, so does that make you a Browns fan?
Thankfully, no. I’m a lifelong Philadelphia Eagles fan (and I would like it noted that this started long before they were considered front-runners!). As well as the football, what I really enjoy about the NFL is the business side: how teams find undervalued assets, build a system and make smart investment decisions. The Eagles have done that exceptionally well over the last several years. In some ways, it’s not that different from analytics, where you’re looking for signals others might miss, separating noise from value, and trying to make better decisions under uncertainty.
Contact Daniel to discuss any of the subjects raised in this Q&A.
