Today we’ll contemplate that most sublime of mysteries: the mind of the consumer. A carefully designed study from Intent Lab tested whether giving consumers what they wanted – that is, showing them products they are looking for – gives better results than trying to address their underlying goals. Turns out that messages related to goals are more effective.

Mobile attribution vendor AppsFlyer has introduced Incrementality, a solution that runs tests to determine the incremental impact of remarketing programs. Managing hold-out samples is tough, so that’s noteworthy in itself. But I was also intrigued by AppsFlyer’s statement that “attribution and incrementality are completely independent concepts” – the difference, apparently, being that attribution assigns full or fractional revenue “credit” to marketing touches while incrementality estimates the net revenue change resulting from a touch. Got that?

Changes in marketing channels and data access have made advertising measurement more important, and challenging, than ever.  Taking advantage of growing interest in the topic, Bain Capital is selling Kantar Group’s audience measurement division, Kantar Media, to global investment firm H.I.G. Capital for “approximately $1 billion”.  Kantar Media accounts for 4,500  of Kantar Group’s 25,000 employees.