There are researchers who produce reports, and there are those who shape decisions. Aarushi Kumar is firmly in the second category.

With over a decade of experience translating consumer, B2B and market intelligence into strategy that moves revenue, she has built her practice around one conviction: data should answer the questions that matter to the business, not the ones that are easiest to measure.

At Tripadvisor, where she leads Strategic Insights across EMEA and APAC, Aarushi translates traveller behaviour into commercial value for advertisers, including categories that have not traditionally viewed the platform as a travel advertising channel. Her work sits at the intersection of data strategy, commercial performance, and measurement innovation, shaping how Tripadvisor articulates and delivers its advertiser value proposition across markets.

Tripadvisor is where travel decisions are made. 490 million monthly unique visitors. 1 billion reviews. An audience that arrives with intent: to plan, to compare, to choose. For travel brands, the case for advertising here writes itself.

But Tripadvisor's most interesting advertisers aren't only travel brands.

A neobank targeting high-earning frequent travelers. A luxury fragrance house reaching affluent audiences across Italy and the UK. These are not the advertisers you'd expect to find on a platform built around restaurant ratings and hotel rankings. And yet they're here, because the traveler in planning mode is also a consumer at peak attention, with high disposable income and a demonstrated willingness to act.

The question Tripadvisor needed to answer was whether they could prove what that reach was worth, in brand terms, not just impression terms.

That's where the story gets interesting.

Tripadvisor scaled its digital brand measurement framework from pilot studies into a production-grade measurement infrastructure over 18 months, under Aarushi’s leadership, enabling Happydemics Brand Lift measurement to be embedded as a core proof layer within its advertiser proposition across markets.

Scale of deployment: Rolled out a cross-market measurement framework used across 50+ advertiser campaigns since 2024, strengthening pre-sales narratives and supporting advertiser acquisition discussions.

Growth in adoption: Delivered a +109% increase in measurement adoption year-on-year, reflecting strong advertiser demand and increased reliance on standardised campaign effectiveness measurement.

Operational efficiency: Reduced campaign effectiveness reporting turnaround time from over 3 days to under 24 hours, enabling near real-time performance evaluation and accelerating post-campaign and renewal discussions with advertisers.

Two studies that point to the same truth: the more complex the campaign architecture, the more Brand lift earns its place.

Usecase #1: A luxury brand activated on Facebook and TikTok across Italy and the UK. The question was attribution: in a fragmented social environment, which platform was actually moving the brand?

In Italy, Facebook drove a +33 pt consideration uplift and +21 pts on preference, both top 5% of benchmark. TikTok delivered +29 pts and +15 pts. In the UK, consideration reached +36 pts on Facebook and +33 pts on TikTok, above benchmark on both. On TikTok, the brand ranked first in preference against competitors among exposed users. Not second. First.

Usecase #2: A UK fintech brand, targeting high earners, juggling households and older financial planners needed to know which segment was genuinely moving, and where the creative was falling short.

Attribution was above benchmark across all three. By 25, 30 and 23 points respectively. Brand familiarity and preference uplifts were statistically significant and consistent. Consideration rose across every segment, with Juggling Households showing the strongest response, mirroring the campaign's CTR data and validating the media buy.

The traveler mindset transfers across categories. An audience in traveling mode is thinking about what to wear, what to drive, what bank account to open before they leave. The purchase intent that makes Tripadvisor powerful for travel brands extends to every category that touches the traveling life.

Segmentation is where the real insight lives. Aggregated results tell you the average. Segmented results tell you where the brand is winning, where it's losing, and which audience to prioritize in the next brief.

Social is where the brand story lands. The ability to read consideration, familiarity and preference uplift by social platform is what gives media buyers the confidence to invest and the intelligence to optimize.

Repeat measurement is the sign of a working partnership. That loyalty is evidence that the results are changing decisions and that brands are coming back because the intelligence is worth the investment.

The next step for Tripadvisor is using Brand Lift Studies not just to shape the conversations that happen before a brief is written.

That means bringing benchmark data into pre-sales, showing prospective advertisers what brands like theirs have achieved on the platform, in their category, against their target audience. It means building multi-channel measurement frameworks that read the combined effect of display, video and social together as one brand trajectory. And it means going deeper into the funnel: measuring the post-exposure behaviors that connect brand income to commercial outcome.

Tripadvisor built its reputation on the idea that the best performance comes from real experience. That same logic now applies to advertising.