Evans, Head of Innovations and Insights at Samsung Ads and author of  The Little Book of Data, shares how he thinks of himself as a detective, what drew him from the entertainment industry to NYU Stern, and why he decided to write a book about data.

Justin Evans has always lived at the intersection of creativity and analysis—even before he realized it. Raised in Lexington, Virginia, a small college town tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains and known for its eccentrics and musicians, he grew up immersed in stories and curiosity. His first book, a novel titled A Good and Happy Child, was published in 2007. But over the past two decades, it is data—its power, its mystery, its narrative potential—that has come to define his career. Today, as Head of Innovation & Insights at Samsung Ads, Evans leads data innovation for a billion-dollar advertising business. His newest project: a book designed to help everyone—not just data scientists—think like a data person.

Evans’s path to data leadership wasn’t linear. After studying English at Columbia University, he set his sights on the entertainment industry and joined Paramount Pictures. But he quickly discovered that the creative side of the industry could be tough terrain. Wanting to build a more dynamic and durable career, he turned to NYU Stern, where he found the ideal bridge between storytelling and business strategy. “Stern opened up the tech and entertainment world for me,” he recalls. Courses in media, strategy, and innovation provided a foundation for navigating an industry in rapid transformation.

Justin Evans speaking at Advertising Week 2025 in New York City

Mastering the Evolving Data Landscape in Digital Media 

After graduating from Stern’s Full-Time MBA program in 2001, Evans joined The New York Times. Soon thereafter, a mentor gave him pivotal advice: to thrive in the 21st century, he needed to understand data. Taking that counsel seriously, he joined Nielsen and found the work unexpectedly revelatory. Immersed in direct marketing segmentation tools like the famed PRIZM system, Evans learned how demographic and behavioral data could be combined to predict human actions. He later helped develop one of Nielsen’s early products that translated offline consumer predictions—such as a person’s likelihood of opening a piece of direct mail—into predictions about digital behavior.

“Data is an abstract phenomenon,” Evans says. “It’s numbers, descriptions of reality that can be manipulated and combined in infinite ways. But the magic comes from turning those insights into stories that solve real problems.” This philosophy has guided his leadership at Comcast and now at Samsung Ads, where he oversees global analytics and insights. A defining moment came at the onset of the pandemic, when advertisers panicked as audiences shifted overnight to streaming platforms. Ad agencies lacked data to understand how they could reach customers in this new landscape. Evans and his team created a simple, visual dashboard that illuminated viewer behavior—what apps people used, what content they watched, and how target audiences migrated. “It was like turning on the light in a dark room,” he says. When clients understood the data, they were willing to step in.

Evans emphasizes clarity, humility, and the courage to ask what he calls “dumb questions.” He sees these moments not as weakness, but as essential acts of translation. “Everyone in the room needs to speak the same simple language,” he says. For his teams, he looks for passion, curiosity, and a scrappy determination to solve problems. “If someone lights up when they talk about creativity with data, you know you have the right person.”

Using Data to Think Like a Detective 

Now an expert in data analytics, Evans decided it was time to share his expertise in a book: The Little Book of Data: Understanding the Powerful Analytics that Fuel AI, Make or Break Careers, and Could Just End Up Saving the World, a guide for non-experts on how to think clearly and creatively in a data-driven world. His book aims to instill confidence in readers. He believes data is a universal tool—useful to nonprofit leaders needing hard metrics for funding, entrepreneurs measuring impact, or anyone trying to illuminate something that feels soft or abstract. Whether quantifying the health cost of loneliness or the output of a community garden, Evans encourages readers to “think like a detective.”

When he’s not building global analytics platforms or writing books, Evans unwinds by cooking, blogging, and spending time with his children. His last vacation took him to Bordeaux, and he’ll soon head to Edinburgh to visit his daughter, who is studying in Scotland. 

For Evans, data is not just information—it’s a way of seeing the world, solving problems, and telling stories that matter.