Beth Rockwood

Senior Vice President, Market Resources and Ad Sales Research
Discovery Communications

I have worked in the advertising and media business for 32 years. My first 18 years were spent at Young and Rubicam in media planning and media management, the next 8 at CBS Television Network in research and business development, and the most recent 6 years at Discovery Communications in research and marketplace analysis. The common thread in my experience is a belief in the importance of innovation and actionable learning. All three of my positions have enabled me to build business by advancing this belief.

Young and Rubicam
Young and Rubicam provided me with substantial experience working with a wide variety of clients, understanding their needs, and providing actionable recommendations for communications.

I held the positions of Director of Media Planning and Director of Media at Young and Rubicam. I worked with a number of clients who were extremely disciplined in their approach to media including Kraft General Foods, Johnson & Johnson, and Colgate Palmolive. Additional business experience included Gulf Oil, Met Life, Merrill Lynch, Fox and Disney Motion Pictures, Kentucky Fried Chicken, USA Today, US Army and American Home Products. My responsibility included oversight of planning, buying, research and new business.

We designed many approaches that helped move our communications planning forward, increasing the accountability of the process. We were heavily involved in marketing mix testing and modeling, were early participants in Scan America, and MSA. We developed the concept of “Consumer Centric Planning” at that time, one of the first successful tools to aide in communication planning.

CBS Television Network
At CBS my role shifted to creating a value sell and to develop our credentials to appeal to new advertisers. We were successful in working with the Pharmaceutical and Financial Industries in order to design innovative programs to achieve their objectives.

My responsibility for development of new business across all network dayparts and working with the Viacom Plus Team (cross media sales) provided first hand experience with the strengths of broadcast prime, daytime, news, late night, and sports (Golf, Tennis, NFL, NCAA Basketball), cable, syndication, out of home and radio. Understanding these media from the perspective of the media owner is critical to understanding the actionable areas for innovation.

Discovery Communications – Cable Television and Digital Media
Discovery has allowed me to continue the work that I began at CBS. My position is centered on the need for greater accountability. Our team is responsible for marketplace intelligence, audience estimates and forecasting, positioning work, and custom research for advertisers.

In our job as estimators and forecasters, we are very close to the current data used for currency measurement and have a clear view of the strengths and limitations of the data in use today.

We have been successful in the development of a variety of new tools to help demonstrate accountability. Custom work has been done to prove the value of sponsorships (Clorox, Bank of America, Kraft, General Motors), we have been active in showing the value of integrations (Nielsen Place Values, IAG ), custom work on attachment has also been commissioned with NewMediaMetrics and OTX. We were among the first to offer guarantees using Nielsen’s amRLD and TNS Charter data.

Most of our research is collaborative, working directly with clients and agencies to design research that will meet their needs.

We have recently signed with TRA in order to begin to gain experience with single source data. We have contracted for the MRI NetViews fusion data. These are initiatives that will help us to continue to advance our understanding.

Our organization values innovation and accountability and wants to move beyond the current commodity media market. Our belief is that understanding our clients’ needs and demonstrating new and better metrics will help us to succeed.