Nielsen rival iSpot.tv hires Leslie Wood as chief research officer

ISpot.tv has hired Leslie Wood as its chief research officer, giving the Nielsen measurement challenger a high-profile addition.

Wood spent more than a decade working with packaged goods marketers to merge Nielsen audience data with Catalina household retail sales data. At iSpot, she’ll lead new currency initiatives across linear and streaming TV and oversee the data science department.

Wood was chief research officer of NCSolutions, a joint venture of Nielsen and Catalina in which Nielsen has the majority stake, for 12 years up until February. 

Wood was most recently working with Media Trust LLC and her own firm Leslie Wood Research.

She is likely the most honored active market researcher in the business, most recently receiving the 2023 American Marketing Association’s Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Award for helping brands understand the business and brand impact of advertising, an honor that’s been bestowed on George Gallup and David Ogilvy among others. Wood also received the Advertising Research Foundation’s Erwin Ephron Demystification Award in 2019 and was inducted into the Market Research Council’s Hall of Fame in 2016.

ISpot’s previous chief research officer, Vijoy Gopalakrishnan, is leaving the company, according to a person familiar with the matter. Gopalakrishnan joined the company in 2021 after working at IRI and Nielsen.

Wood has been lead researcher on numerous studies in recent years on the impact of media on short- and long-term brand sales, largely drawing on Nielsen audience data.

“My passion for decades has been empowering consumer brands with better measurement and data science to deliver greater return on investments that can deliver better products and services for everyday people,” said Wood in a statement. “Putting my passions to work for iSpot gives me an opportunity not just to innovate at the measurement platform of choice for brands but to help ensure the very same metrics brands use to justify, optimize TV investments can also be the metrics they transact upon.”

“Leslie Wood has been recognized as one of the most respected names in the media industry,” said iSpot CEO and founder Sean Muller. “Her reputation as a collaborative, innovative leader and her achievements in ad research, patent creation and TV incrementality, among other things, will serve as the backbone for iSpot’s continued push forward on in order to provide the industry with a currency that can finally unlock the full potential of premium video that exists today for brands, agencies and publishers.”