Eve Stevens, senior manager at Microsoft, is one of those folks who has been on the leading edge of measurement for a long time. (For so long, in fact, that I’d assumed we’d named her a Measurement Maven ages ago.) Eve was a pivotal contributor to The Conclave’s standards on social media measurement. She was always asking the tough questions and making us think outside committee ”group think.”
Pushing boundaries
As someone who has worked with Eve off and on for years, the thing I admire most is her ability to push the boundaries of what you can do today. When she told me she was measuring trust using automation, I was skeptical. I’d tried to do the same thing years ago, and dismissed it as impossible. But she has managed to do it. That’s typical: she’s laser focused on getting research that tells her team what they need to know, regardless of how bleeding edge it might be.
A frequent guest and speaker at our annual Summit on the Future of Communications Measurement, we count on Eve to present work and methodologies that are light years ahead of what the rest of us think about. Last year she explained the breakthrough work she did defining trust, and how she accurately tracked media conveyance of the various components of trust worldwide.
Toward more accurate reach
Eve will be back to the Summit again this year to talk about how diversity applies to her work in defining audiences. Her goal is to define reach in a way that is specific to diverse groups of readers. For years we’ve struggled to better define reach, with most people thinking it’s synonymous with impressions. But we know that impressions and eyeballs are overinflated and widely disbelieved. For forward-thinking organizations like Eve’s, the Holy Grail is more accurate identification of not just how many people you’re really reaching, but who they are, what they think, and how they react to your messages.
What Eve is doing makes “article level reach” look quaint. The sophistication and depth of her understanding of measurement is truly exceptional. Especially when it comes to how to target specific audiences with the right messages.
For all her expertise, and for all her years of measurement inspiration, we name Eve Stevens our Measurement Maven of the Month. Congrats! ∞
