Welcome to Nerd Alert, a series of special episodes bridging the gap between marketing academia and practitioners. We’re breaking down highly involved, complex research into plain language and takeaways any marketer can use.In this episode, Elena and Rob discuss the relationship between marketers' intuition and data-driven decisions in ad effectiveness. Listen in as they discover whether instincts or analytics offer the best path to advertising success. Topics covered:   [00:40] “Marketers' Intuitions About the Sales Effectiveness of Advertisements”[01:00] Predicting effective ads is no better than random chance[04:25] Intuition versus analytics[05:45] The horse racing metaphor[06:25] Pushback for CMOs[07:40] The importance of pretesting To learn more, visit marketingarchitects.com/podcast  Resources: Nicole Hartnett, Rachel Kennedy, Byron Sharp and Luke Greenacre (2016), "Marketers' Intuitions about the Sales Effectiveness of Advertisements", Journal of Marketing Behavior: Vol. 2: No. 2–3, pp 177-194. http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/107.00000034  Get more research-backed marketing strategies by subscribing to The Marketing Architects on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.