Central Control Session – Elevating Marketing ROI: Geographic Randomized Controlled Trials as the Gold Standard for Measurement

In today's uncertain economic climate, advertisers face mounting pressure to justify every dollar spent. The real danger isn't marketing budget waste but inadvertently cutting the channels actually driving high returns due to flawed measurement approaches. This session introduced geographic randomized controlled trials (Geo RCTs) as the highest quality evidence methodology for determining true advertising effectiveness.

Presenters:

  • Rick Bruner
    CEO and Founder, Central Control
    Formerly research and product leader at DoubleClick, Google, Viacom, Marketing Evolution, and Viant.
    Vice Chair of I-COM and founder of Research Wonks.
    Website: https://www.centralcontrol.com
  • Talgat Mussin
    Senior Consultant, Causal Measurement
    Marketing Science leader, formerly at Google, Amazon, and TikTok.
    Incrementality Insider (newsletter): https://www.incrementality.net

 

Presentation Agenda:

  • How to design and implement scalable Geographic RCTs across your media mix
  • Why Nielsen DMAs and other geographic clusters create ideal experimental units
  • Practical applications for validating and calibrating marketing mix models
  • Real-world case studies, including a $1B ROI revelation that traditional measurement missed