Market Research - Promoting Culture Change for The Trade Desk (TTD)

Weighting (% of final grade): 10%
Learning Outcome(s) Assessed: CLO1, CLO2
Note: Conduct 100% independent research to collect essential findings and insights related to the three challenge areas and the one that resonates most with you. Seek information extensively from other sources, especially people with expertise in the problem area. Priority is to find evidence that helps you choose the problem you think is worth solving by the client organization. Read carefully about the challenge, guidance, and deliverables below. CHECK RELEVANT COURSE MATERIALS AND REFERENCES UNDER MODULES (!)
PURPOSE
Your document shows your professional market research and problem-scoping capabilities. Once completed, you should be proud to share it with senior executives, including me as your professor of practice. So ensure you get excited to fall in love with one of the challenges you decide to investigate during this course. As you conduct your research, think of the underlying opportunities for data collection and how to harness these for business purposes. The assignment also familiarizes everyone with the initial steps of design thinking and lean pedagogy as a shared process for learning in the course.
During the course, you will design a solution for the chosen problem which is seen as intriguing to stakeholders and resonates with this assignment and the original challenge scoping.
GUIDANCE
After initial research, decide on one problem area and proceed with more in-depth market research and problem scoping to learn as much as possible about this particular problem, need, or challenge.
Avoid replicating what is already being done in business; instead, come up with new issues that still need to be addressed associated with the challenge you choose. In terms of context, be creative and look for the unexplored.
Evidence of why this problem is worth solving and why doing so may offer high-value opportunities.
Ensure you provide enough context with rigorous references (both academic and professional) to the course materials and other sources, including input from experts in the field.
A compelling problem can be solved as an instance or activity where a problem is solved for the target audience in a new and novel fashion while giving the client company an ethical, reliable, unused, and valuable way of conducting business.
DELIVERABLES
Cover with heading and name, brief max 4-pages of text and bullets, with page numbering and subheadings as requested: professional document with APA references, unlimited number of complete appendices including relevant and readable tables, graphs, images, etc. Font 12, 1.0 spacing, and standard margins.
Note: executives are busy people who crave evidence to make sound decisions, so ensure you stick to the core, reference, and if you need more pages, refer to relevant appendices in the main text.
Before starting this assignment, check the rubric for what determines a quality contribution.
You are expected to submit a detailed description of your problem set and data collection opportunity by referring actively to relevant sources to strengthen your problem argument and then responding to the following critical areas of importance (use these headings):
Introduction and Problem Statement: Introduce the paper by leading the reading to the theme, the problem, and critical findings, along with a brief document flow overview.
Market Research: Identify and define the problem area based on your research findings regarding currency, relevancy, and societal and business significance (actively referenced, both academically and professionally).
Description of Problem and Significance of data collection opportunity: Provide clarity to the underlying issues, the people and organizations dealing with them, and define data collection opportunities when addressing the problem. Make appropriate references to your market research discoveries.
Opportunity and Risk Assessment: Describe competing and existing initiatives, regulatory trends, and other factors influencing the opportunity to solve the problem and collect data. What resources are needed to collect data to address the issue, and what risks and potential barriers like technology or regulation have you identified? What impact could a working solution have on people, businesses, industry, and the environment, both positive and negative? The answer could build on digitalization and leveraging data-driven transformation, analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), hybrid, cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), Blockchain, Robotic Process Automation, and other similar exponential technologies.
Concluding Discussion: Conclude by arguing, based on your newly gathered research and analyzed intelligence, why solving this problem is worthwhile, especially from a business and data collection perspective. Why is it novel and fresh, despite potential competition / alternative solutions? Finally, list concrete actions for your client to proceed and succeed in building a state-of-the-art solution.
Personal Reflection: Discuss critical findings from this assignment for yourself; what was most valuable learning? Discuss how you will continue enhancing your knowledge with potential external people from your network throughout the course.
Reference List
Appendices
IN THE SLIDES I UPLOADED, THE THREE PROBLEMS ARE LAID OUT; I CHOSE THE THIRD ONE, THE CULTURAL ONE.
THE PROFESSOR WANTS THE PROBLEM TO BE IDENTIFIED AND THE SOLUTION TO BE MARGINAL IN FACT HE THEN POSTED THIS:
I have decided to work on #3 (Cultural Change) and I just wanted to ensure that I’m on the right track. Below are some questions I still have. I reached out to some of my peers and all of them have different inputs; I thought it would be wiser to just ask you instead
Challenge #3 on Slide 26 on the 1st deck states the question “How should TTD work with major TV platforms and providers to help drive this culture amongst advertisers?”. To clarify, when we refer to “major TV platforms”, are we talking about connected TV (CTV) (i.e. Roku, Apple TV, Netflix, Disney) or linear/cable TV networks?
Here I think you could identify slightly different problems in different segments. The biggest obstacles for change are probably in traditional linear/cable that operate as he said solely on upfront payments. The others have also obstacles, but are already making commitments to shifts. Think Netflix who announced recently their ad freemium model, etc. The question then becomes is TTD their preferred option, or how do they build the business model and background logistics.
The way I understood challenge #3 is that TTD is looking for ways to convince advertisers to invest more on CTV vs linear/cable TV ads. Can you kindly confirm if my understanding is correct?
Its that entire transition that is intriguing right now, advertisers spend most of their money on TV campaigns, and those are dominantly purchased upfront right now without knowing for sure what you get. If you move to an instant bidding model for consumer attention the value will be much much higher, because we know precisely who is watching and can thus target ads in a revolutionary manner. This is why TTD can earn a much higher margin for the added value they can offer. The challenge is the old traditional trade taking place and to understand why it does not transform swiftly. One reason is that TV companies buy their content in advance and they prefer to get the money from advertisers equally upfront, the TTD model puts the risk more on them as the revenue start coming with the real views once show is on.
In the Conclusion part of the instructions, it’s stated that we have to write about concrete action plans for success. Since there are more concepts to be discussed in class between this submission and the solutions deck (due Dec 4), I assume there is a possibility that the action plans we write in this submission may change completely. Can you please confirm if this is alright or are we expected to have already ironed out the solutions plan?
Absolutely, and this is a paper about problem scoping, so action plans steer you to what should be done next, rather than stating any kind of final solution.
I’m worried about the possibility that the solutions our class will come up with have already been tested as a no-go or have already been implemented by TTD internally (i.e. info not available online) – is there a way for us to check with Ian about what they have done so far in relation to the challenges so as not to give him redundant results? I understand that thinking out of the box is part of the challenge, so if this is not possible, can we maybe get a general idea of what he and his team is not interested in doing or implementing so we can give them more useful insights? For example, I remember him saying that TTD being a self-service DSP is what’s keeping them profitable hence, I’m assuming TTD is not considering offering a managed DSP service. While this info is more relevant to Challenge #2 (Long-tail), I think some of my classmates would already have a similar solution in mind.
Ian was very clear to point out that he does not want us to be too tied to what they are already exploring, he said it a couple of times actually. I think the reason is two-fold, he wants you to learn genuine problem scoping and solving based on your own research and ideation. Second, he wants to see what you come up with as outsiders looking in. Its going to be rewarding for him to capture new ideas, nuances of ideas, and to verify his thinking. I suggest you push this as far as you can and worry less about what they may be doing. I just worked for a $4B valuation client who had the top strategy consulting firm doing similar work simultaneously. In our exit feedback the COO said we were more concrete and much more actionable in our advice compared to the high level strategic objectives given by the other company. SO, dont underestimate your power in helping out.
This last question, I think is more in line with the solutions deck. May I know if we are expected to also create a financial feasibility of our recommendation on top of the prototype? If so, will we be given a budget to work around?
As we look on the canvas, some financials will be expected. You dont need to be overly detailed, but enough to make an Marketing Officer understand that you have covered the basics.