AI & Human Data: Pure Spectrum's CIO Phil Ahad on Research Industry Evolution

In this CEO Series interview, Leonard Murphy talks with Phil Ahad, Chief Innovation Officer at Pure Spectrum, about the transformative impact of AI and data quality in market research. Phil highlights how Pure Spectrum’s platform processes 1.5 million daily respondents, combining human data with synthetic solutions to enhance efficiency and deliver actionable insights. He stresses the critical need for high-quality data as the foundation for accurate AI models.

Looking ahead, Phil envisions a future where hybrid approaches redefine how research is conducted, blending AI and human data collection for deeper, more precise insights. With a focus on trust, privacy, and innovation, Pure Spectrum is committed to making research simpler and more effective while empowering researchers to solve problems creatively in a rapidly changing landscape.

Transcript

Leonard Murphy: Hello everybody. It's Lenny Murphy with another edition of the CEO series. In my guest chat. And without further ado, I will introduce my guest, Phil, welcome. How are you?

Phil Ahad: I'm great. How are you?

Leonard Murphy: I'm doing all So, good to have The pro audience, we're recording this right before Christmas. I'm not quite sure when this is going to go live. So, Phil and I were just talking about panic buying or wrapping up the holidays. So, if we seem a little hairy,…

Phil Ahad: Yeah, we're less than a week away and…

Leonard Murphy: that's why we touched on a sore subject. So, you're more panicked than I am.

Phil Ahad: I've done almost nothing for it. So, here we go. Yeah. Yeah.

Leonard Murphy: …

Phil Ahad: We'll figure it out. we'll just make it happen.

Leonard Murphy: because that's what you do,…

Phil Ahad: Yeah. Exactly.

Leonard Murphy: that's the segue. So, let's for those who don't know you, let's talk about your current role, but also your origin story.

Phil Ahad: Yeah. I recently joined Pure Spectrum going on about three months now as the chief innovation officer. Been in the research consumer insights industry for gosh makes you sound so old about 13 years now. I feel young and…

Leonard Murphy: You're a baby. I don't want to die.

Phil Ahad: I see myself in this video. me, what's going on here? But yeah, I know so I've been in the space for a minute. I started my career off in, digital marketing, and really focused on companies that are, in the early 2000s. They're all adopting and transforming to online strategies and kind of targeted that niche like traditional offline companies trying to have an online presence and move a product from offline to online and kind of went through insurance and commercial real estate and other different avenues and market research 13 years ago was prime for it, right? we're all going through this online survey transformation and then moving our products and our data collection processes to the digital world and got stuck right and we're never short of innovating and transforming our processes the way we interact with panelists the way we make decisions on that specific data and obviously now we're going to go through another massive transformation here with AI and synthetics so that's kind of the origin that's got me here and…

Leonard Murphy: I have to stay. Yeah, that we another one…

Phil Ahad: Got me stuck and got me really excited about the future of the industry

Leonard Murphy: Who just stumbled me as well. So although it was 25 years ago now. so that's why I said you're a baby. I really feel old.

Phil Ahad: Yeah.

Leonard Murphy: That's a good segue right into the next question of what you're excited to be working on now during such a period of far more rapid transformation than we experienced before with the ad moving on  line.

Phil Ahad: It's like end of the year, right? So, everyone's kind of posting out their recap for 2024, their outlook for 2025. And I'm just kind of like I get a little chuckle. it's such an exciting time, right?" And if you look back, I mean, everyone says that about every time period they're in. It's always an exciting time. But I think for our space and our industry, it's definitely going to be a big shift, right? we're going through a situation here where we actually kind of have to adapt, right? We've got to make the entire process of giving us your thoughts and your opinions more engaging, and easier. And this new technologies, emerging technology within our space allows us to do so much more, not just with synthetic, right? the whole process of us going through and looking through the data and making insights and making business decisions off it. We've got this piece of technology now at our hands that just makes the whole process easier and allows us to spend our time really on the why, and then those specific impacts to your businesses. That to me is what exciting about it. and here at Pure Spectrum, what's even more exciting about is the human capital and the amount of data this company sits on every single day. We get 1.5 million unique people going through our ecosystem every day. We've got that human capital going through our ecosystem. And we've got all that data that allows us to kind of transform and infuse and push the synthetic and the AI processes forward, too. So, the opportunities are limitless. it's a matter of, where we want to sit in that space. How do we continue to support the industry, our partners in that data collection process?  how we kind of become even more foundational to that data collection process.

Leonard Murphy: of the entire industry period where you have to have people to talk to or else we have no jobs. It's just that so companies like pure spectrum you are integral to the success of the industry period. While at the same time that sector has taken some hits in the past few years because of quality concerns because of the supply right and I think that's how I think about it.  it's been optimizing for supply. not because there was any doing shoddy work or anything of that nature. It's just the way the ecosystem has developed. Same thing in advertising etc so to your point there's this massive opportunity for human data to feed the development of new AI solutions. I think that is an amazing opportunity for us that can deliver better value more efficiency greater business impact etc etc all those things but we have this fundamental issue of we have to ensure that the supply is high quality so garbage in garbage out and I think that the risk of the garbage out component now is larger than it's ever been in the era of AI right the contamination factor potential for that.

Phil Ahad: Yeah, I think we Sorry.

Leonard Murphy: No. so I'd love to get your take on that. And by no means does that mean pure spectrum is I think you guys have done better than most in aggressively for years trying to address that issue, but I would love to get your take and what you can talk about in this new era.

Phil Ahad: So I think you and I talked about this a few months ago too. you foundationally if your data is poor, no matter how great the AI models are, the results are going to be poor, right? And we actually have seen this quite a bit with a lot of synthetic solutions over this last year that they just don't make sense. There's a hallucination in it or is it directionally wrong because what's feeding that engine is directionally wrong. Right? It's not a technology issue. It's absolutely a data issue. And I 100% believe all AI and synthetic needs to be grounded on human data. it cannot predict what's going to happen if it doesn't even know or doesn't have anything that grounds it on what it to know,  And that's why I'm most excited about being here is because we've got this massive funnel of human data that we can tap into in the moment and collect tons and tons of directional response. So to feed these models going forward and to get that accuracy that we really need and to really get the nuance and the human behavior pulled out of these specific models. But to your point, yeah, there's a lot of issues historically within panels. And one of the reasons why I did choose Pure Spectrum as my next endeavor is because we work with some of the best and largest panels across the world. So, I've got massive assets. No one panel's perfect. We all know this, Everyone's going to deal with issues. And even if I gave you the most highly qualified, driver's license ID verified panel and I ran them through a really bad study, you're going to get bad data,…

Leonard Murphy: Yeah.

Phil Ahad: If I ran you through a 45minute study on your mobile phone with a bunch of grids and a bunch of open ends that even had no relevance to what you like or what you're passionate about, you're going to give me bad data. It's not even a panel issue at this time. it's a combination of the entire process that needs to adjust and change. And this is why I'm seeing it every day in some of the studies are coming through even the pure spectrum ecosystem. The studies are getting better. They're getting more targeted. They're getting more relevant and even the experiences are getting more engaging. So I think directionally we're going in the right way in 2025. I think the capabilities just from an operations and process standpoint is making us all better at this too. And then it's going to get to a point where okay maybe I can ask three questions and then I can use these engines to fill in the gaps and I can use these engines to be more predictive. bank. It uses them just to be more of a followup or create new products off the back of that and it becomes a much more robust ecosystem for us to make decisions on. Yeah.

Leonard Murphy: Yeah, agreed. And we're seeing those companies I mean, that's happening now. That's not a future thing. There's companies I work with in kind of the consulting side of the business that are already basically creating, full synthetic personas off of real data and…

Phil Ahad: Yep. It's Yeah.

Leonard Murphy: And has limits, but it's still pretty cool, for lowrisk things, right? Early ideiation. I mean, hell, I do that just off of using GPT1. if I just want to kind of ideate with the concept and go back and forth just leveraging the public data let alone real data. so Yep.

Phil Ahad: This is exactly kind of what I think we have to get into in 2025. It's like where does it make sense to just use those niche solutions or those full synthetic products and where does it make sense that it needs a hybrid and where does it still make sense that we need 100% human data collected on these things and that's I think what we're trying to figure out as an industry and I think we are getting better and better at doing this I'd say 2023 there are a couple full synthetic solutions out there I'm like this can do everything and you run it through a project and you're like wait this is way off. This doesn't make any logical sense. It's because you're basically taking, core demo data and then you're asking it specific nuance behavioral questions of a specific category, So, this is as an industry, and this is what we'll continue to really kind of figure out as we go too, is where it makes sense for these kind of, full synthetic hybrid approaches, full human data collected projects and products. And then  We're all going to get better at this.

Leonard Murphy: IO 10 years ago, I mean, I would be asked to go give a talk somewhere and…

Phil Ahad: Yeah, right.

Leonard Murphy: and I would always play a clip from the movie Minority Report where Tom Cruz is walking through the mall, And there's the targeted advertising right at him. And it That was the term we used and we called it big data, right? We'll get to that point where it's individualized marketing based upon this robust data profile etc.  But we didn't know that we were missing a piece of technology to unlock that, right? And that's what AI did. So, okay, we're there now. That future that we were predicting, we can visualize it is From your perspective, other than kind of the broad stuff we just talked about, what do you specifically see for the future, especially for a company Pure Spectrum? So, what does that look like in the 2-year horizon, do you think? Sure. Yeah. Okay.

Phil Ahad: there's many avenues that we can go in. pure spectrum supports the data collection process even today, So, we're providing the people to get those specific studies done. I see a future and where we continue to provide and be foundational to the data collection process, whether they be synthetic or whether they be human based collected data.  What we got to figure out here is how much information do I actually need about me or you to create a digital persona on Twin of you for you to fully give me me be able to procure those specific predictive behaviors and actions of even new and future products that come to market. That's what we still need to figure out, right? Is it the 25 core demos that we collect on every single study? We can all agree that's not enough, right? How much nuance information do I need to get so that those models then digest out that specific behavior because we don't do research just on a general population I want primary grocery shoppers to tell me what cereal brand they're going to switch to no within a specific audience actually we want to understand the 20 25% behavioral differences as you kind of caught and segment these people out to see what's going to drive change what's going to drive adoption what's going to make you change from brand X to brand Y  And that's kind of what we miss out of these persona based researchers where I'm just taking a persona of a thousand people and giving me an answer. No, that's not really why I'm doing this, right? I want to know within that grouping of audiences, what are the drivers that are going to drive those specific changes and behaviors and attitudes? And that's why we do 500,000 responses in a specific site. So I can cut those segments in those audience out and create nuances within that and then make that business decision. And that's what we're trying to get at right now is how much information do you really need on a specific person to then return that nuance from a synthetic or digital twin persona and then basically replicate what we've been collecting from a human standpoint. And I think that's what 2025 is going to be all about is how far can we push this to replicate human behaviors. Yep. Yeah.

Leonard Murphy: Human data. that's very cool. So I want to be conscious of your time because you got some panic buying to do, so as well as the audience kind of broad lessons you've learned in your career.

Phil Ahad: I mean, I learned early on to ask a ton of questions, right? Especially when you're taking on a new role or new project. Earlier on I would just jump in and know this sounds good or the money's right right let's just start doing it and you realize s*** I probably should have asked exactly what they wanted what the expectation was and actually is that a fit for what I'm doing and what I want to do moving forward so even through this whole new process I mean I left Tuluna last year and I've been there for over a decade and built a lot of great things there built a lot of great relationships there and when I was kind of going on the journey of looking for my next move, I found myself probably asking so many questions that it would annoy the other person, but I had to make sure that it was the right fit for me personally in terms of what I want to do for a journey. So, what I learned is, be inquisitive, like what you're getting into, make sure you understand what they expect of you, and make sure it aligns with what you want to do, not just today, but also over the course of time. I don't know.

Leonard Murphy: Further a little more focused you're talking to one of your kids, right? Dad, I want to enter the research industry. I know no what specific advice would you give to and actually the kid example that's not a good one I was trying to be funny but you're…

Phil Ahad: No, it is a one actually.

Leonard Murphy: But somebody who's actually moving into leadership so someone that direct report for you that u wants to grow overall

Phil Ahad: Yeah. Yeah.

Leonard Murphy: What skill sets what specific advice would you give them to say what you need to besides asking questions which is great but you got to learn to do this

Phil Ahad: I mean I don't want to say our industry changes fast but we do have to be quite creative at times right I think you look at one thing like a survey that hasn't actually changed much at all right even from handwritten paper surveys to online surveys the structure itself has not changed at all right and as a result we're constantly trying to find creative ways to improve the quality of those processes in different mediums, right? So, I think when you kind of work in that type of environment, problems come up a lot, And what's kept me, I would say, grounded in this space is I've always been able to problem solve on my own, Obviously, you need help here and there. You need to tap the right person or get an engineer or an operations person or a sampling person or, data processing person to help you get way.  But if you can kind of take ownership of trying to find the right people to then get that problem solved, you'll be very successful in our field because I can tell you there's no such thing as a perfect fieldwork or perfect project when we're working in that type of scenario where you're taking pretty much a really dated data collection process and asking to do it off of your mobile device when it was pretty much done over a paper study in the past. And that's just going to happen. I think you can't get frustrated because this is just the field we're in. If you're a creative person and you're a problem solver, You'll succeed in this industry. And you also need to kind of put perfection out of your mind, Because we're trying to predict what's going to happen, And in some cases a thousand people to predict a population of a million people. And you can't get too down if you miss, right?  You got to just use all the tools in your disposal as accurate as you possibly can be to make that client or help that client make their best decision possible. Sometime most of the times we win, sometimes you don't and you got to figure out what happen when you don't and apply that going forward. So yeah, I mean being creative and solving these problems as independently as possible will make you very successful in our field.

Leonard Murphy: Yeah. No, that's great feedback. my kids often ask me, "Dad, what do you do for a living?" And the simple answer is, "I solve problems." So, I help people and I solve problems.

Phil Ahad: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Leonard Murphy: Yeah. Yeah.

Phil Ahad: Yeah. 

Leonard Murphy: I mean, fundamentally, that's what we do. So, what else would you like to bring up that I kind of went through the questions that we had agreed on, but I want to give you a chance to bring anything else up that you wanted to bring up.

Phil Ahad: You're talking to a bunch of interesting people either on the brand side or the agency side, too. what are you excited for in 2025?

Leonard Murphy: You turn it around on me, about the same thing really.

Phil Ahad: Yeah, pop out.

Leonard Murphy: I think you did,…

Phil Ahad: I gave you the answer already. So, yeah.

Leonard Murphy: You're brilliant. That's why I want you I was looking forward to talking to you. we see it, We're just at the opportunity to create more efficiency one, that's obvious. more impact to unlock more value through the emergence of technology I think is amazing. and to balance that out with I guess here's really the exciting part for me. as we is it's easier to predict or even to just answer how, right? The data exists already to do that and it's only going to get, even easier to integrate that.

Phil Ahad: Yeah.

Leonard Murphy: Why will become more and more and more important.  It always has been, but I think it will become critically important. And what changes does that pose for us to be able to really understand people at a deep level, not just a behavioral, but kind of intrinsically and emotionally and while also ensuring that we protect privacy, we don't turn into big brother, right? Use that Minority Report example.

Leonard Murphy: I mean, there's also a scary future, so we don't want to get there either. those things are just great big cool problems to tackle. and, I think we're going to screw up, right? There's going to be missteps. there always has been. but we're going to see amazing technology emerge. We're going to see really smart, brilliant people and to watch that play out as we just hopefully deliver a better connection between people and organizations ultimately. I just think that's just super exciting.

Phil Ahad: Right. I feel like we're all now at this point where as long as we make life easier for me to do my job, make it easier for me to consume the products and get to the products and services that I want, I'm okay with it I think we're kind of like seeing the value of these specific things and especially from a data collection standpoint, that's our whole goal too.  is Pure Spectrum's goal is to make life easier for the researcher to going to make life easier for those brands and those companies and those agencies making those decisions. We're going to put you in touch with the right people to answer those specific questions to get that data that you need to make that right business decision and then hopefully to get the products and services out to your consumers so that everything is easier right and I think if we can continue to push on that message and that mission then obviously you don't want to lose all control of your information but at the same time if the world around us is less complex it You're ahead of your time on that one.

Leonard Murphy: My Varaglyph initiative was aligned to that idea but to give people control over that data and although that hadn't grew too early on that but the…

Phil Ahad: That's the problem. Yeah.

Leonard Murphy: what can I say story of my life it's not a day late in a dollar short it's two years early in a dollar short but I think It's a virtuous cycle to be able to say that we're delivering the right message to the right person at the right time based upon their data.

Phil Ahad: Yeah. Yeah.

Leonard Murphy: That should to your point make my life better. I don't think we've nailed every piece of that cycle though. as far as the value of the data and…

Phil Ahad: Of course. Yeah, exactly.

Leonard Murphy: and I think we have to be very cautious because we've seen examples unfortunately over the last few years pretty glaring examples of that access to that information being used manipulatively. so there's that ethical component of that I think we still got to figure else any trust that we've given so far on sharing our information eventually will come crashing down. But we'll figure those things out.

Phil Ahad: Yeah, you're right. I mean, the trust factor is key until, you lose it, then you're never recovering it at that point. Great.

Leonard Murphy: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So yeah. All so thanks for turning the tables on me, Phil. So,…

Phil Ahad: I can …

Leonard Murphy: where can people find you?

Phil Ahad: LinkedIn, email me, text me. I'm around.

Leonard Murphy: All right.

Phil Ahad: Yeah. Yeah,…

Leonard Murphy: Congratulations on the new role at Pure Spectrum and look forward to hearing about all the cool innovations coming forward, as we head into 2025 and good luck with, wrapping up your Christmas shopping.

Phil Ahad: you Thank you so much for your time and the opportunity.

Leonard Murphy: No, thanks, to our producer Bridget. Thank you to our editors, Big Bad Audio. and our sponsors. Most of all, thank you to the audience for giving Philip and I an excuse to sit here and chat. Everybody, take care. Bye-bye.