Teaching Consumer Analytics in Advertising and IMC Courses : Opportunities and Challenges

Advertising effectiveness has always been difficult to measure due to its complicated impact on the bottom line. The emergence of new channels of communication such as social media, mobile and search has further complicated matters. At the same time, marketers are facing increasing pressure to measure and improve return on investment. In this context, the proper use of customer analytics to gain insights and increase efficiency is crucial. While the industry expects students to enter the workforce with adequate training in analytics, students choosing advertising and marketing majors exhibit high levels of aversion to math and statistics. In order to bridge this gap between student aversion and industry expectation, advertising and IMC courses need to incorporate customer analytics concepts into the curriculum. Hence, in this article, we discuss the various consumer analytics elements that can be incorporated into advertising and IMC curriculum and suggest some resources that can aid the teaching of analytics. In addition, we also discuss some of the challenges in teaching analytics and provide a few suggestions to overcome these challenges