Meet Forrester’s New Senior Analyst Covering Performance Marketing: Nikhil Lai
Brands are funneling more dollars into “performance” channels in pursuit of maximum return on advertising spend. According to Forrester’s Marketing Survey, 2022, more than 60% of B2C marketing decision-makers plan to increase their paid media investments in “performance” channels such as search, social, and online video. But the way that consumers buy is changing, and we’ve written about how marketers’ outdated thinking around performance marketing and brand marketing needs a strategic renovation.
Enter Forrester’s newest senior analyst, Nikhil Lai.
Nikhil will delve deeper into what “performance” means in an age when nearly every channel parades as “performance” and data deprecation threatens the efficacy of many data-driven marketing tactics. He’s built a deep understanding of performance marketers’ needs as a practitioner at GE and, for the past three years, as an evangelist of solutions that helps practitioners plan, buy, and measure linear TV and connected TV (CTV) and automate multivariate creative testing.
Nikhil’s coverage will focus on the evolution of performance marketing, retail media, and performance channels such as search (SEO and paid search), CTV, social, streaming audio, and experiential/digital out-of-home. He is ready to help clients with guidance sessions, webinars, and workshops on the current and future states of performance media, SEO best practices, and channel-specific planning.
And Nikhil will collaborate closely with our existing team of analysts, who cover a gamut of media topics:
- Kelsey Chickering: Media planning, comms strategy, and paid media/advertising landscape
- Cindy Liu: Media spend/usage forecasts
- Stephanie Liu: Data strategy and privacy
- Tina Moffett: Media measurement
- Joanna O’Connell: Advertising technology, identity, and programmatic advertising
- Jay Pattisall: Media agencies
- Mike Proulx: The metaverse, emerging media, and streaming services outlook
- Shar VanBoskirk: Email marketing
Set up a guidance session or advisory with Nikhil today to get ahead of the future of performance marketing.