Uber's Edwin Wong on Why the Best Insights Spark Debate

Welcome to Voices from the Field, our new interview series with research leaders pulling back the curtain on how research really works inside today’s most influential companies. Each edition, we’ll share candid conversations with leaders shaping strategy, navigating chaos, and pushing the industry forward... offering the kind of truths you’ll never hear on stage.

For our first issue, our Research Fellow Manasi Chandu sat down with ​Edwin Wong​, Global Head of Measurement Science at Uber Advertising.

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The TL;DR

Fearless researchers don’t just measure what is, they play, test, and shape what’s next.

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Voices from the Field

Edwin Wong has spent more than 20 years at the intersection of media, research, and strategy, shaping how brands like Vox Media, BuzzFeed, Nielsen, Yahoo, and now Uber turn human behavior into actionable insight. Known for challenging researchers to go deeper than reporting, he pushes teams to spark debate, influence real decisions, and earn trust. In this conversation with Manasi, he shares why cultural context matters in global strategy, what keeps research human, and why being fearless is the most underrated skill for early-career researchers.‍

Manasi: Thank you for joining us today for Voices from the Field. I’m really excited to have this conversation. To start, when people outside the industry ask what you do, how do you explain your role at Uber and why it matters?

Edwin: Philosophically, I tell people I study human behavior in a database. Where it gets fun is people think data is just a bunch of numbers, when in reality, it represents what we want out of life and how we behave. It’s a lot more organized than we believe. Regardless of the role or company, it’s what I get to study that makes it so interesting. That’s what I love and consider my job to be — understanding and organizing why and what people are doing.

Manasi: What’s been the most surprising part of stepping into this role?

Edwin: I get to understand the evolution of people and how they move into the next thing. In the roles I’ve had, you see why people connect to certain brands, why they use a specific kind of media, and what draws them in. That’s been the most fun, because you can’t bring value to a brand unless you help them understand what kind of value your service brings to the consumer.

​Manasi: And how does your team factor into this? What seems unique is the way you've set up your team since it is local but the brand is global.

Edwin: I don’t think it’s unique to other leaders. The secret sauce, in my view, is always to provide context through the factors or variables that matter. For us, that includes cultural considerations. The way a customer thinks in APAC versus EMEA versus the Americas is very different, not just on the advertising side but also on the consumer side. When you think about the organization, you need to think through how they engage with and learn about your brand. Then, when they place ads, how effective are they? How incremental is the impact on their business so they see the benefit and want to come back? The intersection of those factors helps us build the best kind of groups.

Manasi: With Uber being global and complex, how do you approach capturing meaningful insights across regions? How do you decide which behaviors or gaps to study more?

Edwin: At the moment, we’re working on a larger study we’re calling “Gen Uber.” It speaks to how Uber allows a different kind of form factor, bridging the digital world back into the physical world. When I was growing up, we lived in the physical world and digital was a new layer. Now, the flip is occurring — we’re leveraging digital experiences to transact in the physical world. That shift shows how Uber is becoming part of the daily movement of life. It’s the platform of life.

Manasi: How do you make sure your work stays grounded in lived experience rather than just what stakeholders expect to see or want to see?

Edwin: The beautiful thing across all my roles is that I was also a user of those services. You need to temper stakeholder expectations with actual use cases and the real things that frustrate or delight you as a user. Friends often share feedback once they know where you work, whether you ask for it or not. That feedback helps identify what to surface and what can be improved or innovated.

Manasi: So you're taking real-time feedback and then implementing it to meet stakeholder expectations?

Edwin: Yes, but don’t close yourself off to stakeholders’ ambitions for innovation. Often they look beyond current use cases and that’s their role, to be future-facing. Insights must be grounded in truth, but they can also help stakeholders validate their thinking, challenge assumptions, or inspire new ideas. My role isn’t to manage the consumer experience — that’s another team — but I focus on how advertisers interact with our systems, what they need from performance metrics, and how to innovate around that.​

Manasi: If we begin to treat insights as strategy shaping rather than information, how do you think this changes the quality of the decisions that we make?

Edwin: I actually think that depending on the kind of research groups you run, reporting can still lead to insights. Understanding what’s table stakes, which metrics drive models, and having consistency in tracking isn’t a bad thing. There are groups that should be doing that, and it’s valuable to have clear North Star measures to track the success of the business.

But I think too many of us fall into that reporting camp instead of asking, “What are the few things that actually matter?” Those are the things that deserve real attention and substantive conversation. The greatest insights spark debate. Sometimes that debate is in direct contrast to your own ideas as a researcher, and that’s exactly the point. Some of my favorite insights are the ones I’ve had to defend. Getting a naysayer to say “yes,” or at least “I see your point,” even if they disagree, shows real conviction in the insight.

You also have to pressure-test whether what you’ve found is any good. If an insight is going to drive decisions, change behavior, or shift the way someone thinks, it has to be compelling. It has to be something you can stand behind and sell.

Manasi: Do you have any recommendations for researchers just starting out like me?

Edwin: Be fearless. Let your experiences shape the insights you bring. Our lived experiences and contexts can be powerful in the stories we tell and the meaning we give to data. One of the best pieces of advice I received came from a planner, not a researcher. She told me, “If you don’t live enough outside of work, you won’t have the context to change a customer or product.” That advice stayed with me because it reminded me to build context outside my work in order to be effective as an insights person.

Manasi: If you had to give one piece of advice to teams that want to ground their insights in lived experiences what would it be?

Edwin: Allow yourself to play. Too often we rush into execution — proposals, RFPs, deliverables. Sometimes it’s better to pause with your team, let your mind wander, and explore ideas, even the ones that sound crazy. As children, play helps us imagine new worlds and believe in change. We need to bring some of that mindset back into our work. Structured play can be incredibly valuable for strategy.

Manasi: And finally, what is one myth about research at scale you wish people would let go of?

Edwin: That big data, data science, and AI will solve everything. The more we’ve moved into automation and massive data sets, the more I’ve come to prize preparation, data quality, and even the choices of what goes into a training set for AI. We’re in an era where more data often just means more mess.

What really matters is extraction, simplicity, and judgment — judgment, judgment, judgment. That’s what becomes essential. You see it in some of the tools we use today that summarize data. They often lack context and judgment, and without those, we risk getting ourselves into trouble.

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The Take™ from the Two Cents Team

Every project and conversation leaves sparks. The Take™ is where we add our Two Cents: the interpretations, debates, and connections that stuck with us long after the interview.

From Manasi Chandu, Two Cents Research Fellow:

This line from Edwin stayed with me: “The best insights are the ones that spark debate, the ones you have to defend.” In other words, the best insights create friction. They make people uncomfortable enough to argue, to question, to pressure-test. That friction is the proof of their value.

It reminded me of brand strategist Eugene Healey’s argument that “too little friction is boring us to death.” Smooth, easy answers may feel efficient, but they strip away meaning. Research is not about consensus. It is about preserving enough tension to keep discovery alive.

And finally, the reminder about lived experience. If you don’t live fully outside of work, you lose the context that makes research matter. As someone just starting, that feels essential to me: research is not about erasing obstacles, but about noticing where the struggle reveals the story.
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From Nylea Rosenberg, Two Cents Chief of Staff:

For me, it was: “Be fearless and let your experiences be a part of the insight that you bring.”

I’ve spent most of my career in operations, behind the scenes making things run. Now, working more closely with research teams, that line made me stop and reflect on the insights I bring to the table and how they shape not just the brand I support, but the ones we partner with and represent. I used to soften my perspective with disqualifiers like “I’m not a researcher” or “This might be an unqualified opinion.” But, Edwin's words reminded me that my lived experience is not a limitation. It is a strength. It is the lens through which I interpret data, challenge assumptions, and connect the dots. And as he put it, the best insights often come from those around us, whether we ask for them or not.‍

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