Aarti Bhaskaran
Snapchat
Aarti Bhaskaran leads the global research and insights practice at Snap, heading up the external thought leadership producing team for sales, marketing, and comms on why companies should spend on Snap. Her team's work showcases for customers "Who are Snapchat's audiences? What do they do? How do ad products perform?"
What types of information sources are you tapping in order to create this thought leadership?
Both first and third party because we do sit on a lot of data, but obviously what we release is quite sensitive. With third party, we tap into stuff that's already produced like syndicated data, and we do a lot of our own research as well.
Interesting that you didn't mention second, or secondary, research. Is that a conscious decision?
We tap into more published work or syndicated data, which we subscribe to. I don't know whether you call it secondary, perhaps you do.
It's an interesting distinction between other research that other companies might have done in the secondary space versus third party is somebody else's primary in a way.
When you think about the cadence of research you're doing to inform your work, something we've been hearing around [IIEX] today is there are a few different buckets:
Big projects: we have tentpole publications or studies.
One offs: someone has a question or we have an idea.
Recurring: we want to stay smart on competitors, our audiences, whatever.
I'm curious if those resonate? If there's anything you'd add or remove?
That's pretty much the kind of requests you get. And most often, it's in line with either a planning cycle of the organization or, because we are more external facing, related to the big marquee tentpole events that come up in the world of media and advertising.
The way we work is we have our standard roadmap where we have timelines, because research – and it's not just the production of the report, but the go to market – takes time and there are ad hoc questions that come every now and then from leadership. So that's how we plan for it.
When it comes to any of the different types of sources of information, what tends to be a deciding criteria for whether you turn to primary, or third party, or otherwise, as you're reacting to ad hoc or bigger projects or different types of requests?
Good question. Several factors. The first is what's the topic, or the business problem you're trying to solve? Who are the stakeholders? And what's going to be the final use of the work that we do?
Because if it's going to be on stage at a marquee event, then we would obviously want to have ownership over what we do. Or if it's a very proprietary product we're going to launch, then obviously it will be in house. And at times it could be a larger advertiser question. Then, we might look at a different source.
Couple final questions for you in a speed round! Obviously, AI is a hot topic today. What's your one word when you think about the future of research and AI being part of it?
Maybe it's a phrase. Can't get away.
Inevitable! Absolutely.
And when you think about leveraging tools like Google or LLMs, any of these general miners of publicly available information, what's the word that comes to mind in terms of their ability or the degree to which they make it easy for you to get the information you need?
I would say enhancement – kind of enhances what you already do.
Super interesting. Thanks for your time!