Trustee
Scott McDonald is president and CEO of the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF)—an organization more than 80 years old that applies scientific rigor to the measurement of media audiences and the assessment of how advertising works. ARF is comprised of more than 400 member companies encompassing all parts of the media/advertising ecosystem—national advertisers, media companies, advertising agencies, research companies, advertising technology companies, consultancies, as well as a number of universities, institutes, and nonprofits. Previously, Scott held senior research positions in global media companies including a 14-year stint as senior vice president of Research at Condé Nast and various research positions at Time Warner Inc. Among other things, his work has focused on the ways in which the shift to digital media has affected consumer behavior and media economics. Throughout his career in media research, he has sustained engagement with academia by publishing widely and teaching courses on media measurement and economics at Columbia Business School, Columbia University. He presently serves as adviser to the Social Science Matrix Program at the University of California (UC), Berkeley and is involved in the development of a project to train computers to analyze video data. He was an undergraduate at UC Berkeley and earned a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University in 1983.