Recently a group of marketing directors gathered at Harbour 220 to hear from Matt Farrugia and Brodie Arnhold from Mutinex on Mixed Market Modelling (MMM).

This technology is quickly becoming a crucial tool for any marketing team and business because it removes the guesswork from marketing budget allocation.

We sat down with Matt and Brodie after the event to get the details:

The Australian Association of National Advertisers (AANA) is always looking to support its members on ways to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of media measurement. Can you elaborate on how MMM (Market Mix Modelling) can be used by advertisers to gain a more holistic view of campaign performance across different media channels?

The key difference between market mix modelling and other types of marketing measurement is its breadth and ability to link your marketing investment directly to key business outcomes such as ROI or revenue. So, for example, your MTA (Multi-touch attribution) model will only show you where prospects or customers have engaged with digital channels (leaving the role of TV or Radio for eg. unclear). Even a media mix model will only uncover the contribution of various media channels (including offline).

Market mix modelling, on the other hand, takes in a range of different data sources such as interest rates, the weather, competitor data and measures the impact of all of these things alongside marketing efforts. This gives marketers a full picture of how their marketing efforts are really performing given a range of factors that can help or hinder them.

As consumer behaviour and media consumption habits continue to evolve, what are your thoughts on how MMM needs to adapt to stay relevant and insightful for advertisers?

The great revolution in MMM in the last five years has been removing it from the realm of static powerpoints delivered via consultants to the methodology pioneered by Mutinex – SaaS based solutions – ready for marketers to use any time.

The next great leap forward is really already happening now – this is where models will become central to the way businesses function. And having a model that is accurate, granular and scalable will be key to enabling self-service and making the best decisions to power growth. Mutinex is really focussed maintaining a high quality foundational model that can learn without a lot of manual configuration whilst bringing in the right data to ensure that context is accurate.  

A key focus for AANA members is obtaining actionable insights from measurement data. Can you provide some concrete examples of how advertisers can leverage MMM data to optimize their media strategies and improve campaign ROI?

On the Mutinex GrowthOS platform, marketers can dive into a range of features that allow them to breakdown channel performance, creative performance or look at the contribution of brand equity for example. One particularly popular feature in GrowthOS is the scenario builder, which allows marketers to create, save and forecast the performance of a range of different budget investment scenarios. For more than one marketer, the scenario builder has been fundamental to maintaining and increasing marketing budget levels as we face tough economic conditions. Being able to spell out the implications of budget reductions to revenue and sales to senior leaders and particularly finance departments is very powerful.

Many advertisers utilize a variety of measurement tools beyond MMM. How can MMM be effectively integrated with other measurement solutions to provide a more comprehensive view of campaign performance?

MMM is just one part of the marketing measurement picture and essential to making good investment decisions. But most marketing teams will continue to use MTA models to try to understand which customer touchpoints are resonating in their digital journey, brand tracking to measure unprompted awareness and consideration (this data can be integrated into MMM) and other qualitative studies that might tell them more about creative.

Addressability is a growing concern for advertisers. In your view, how will MMM evolve to address the challenges and opportunities presented by a cookieless future?

Market mix modelling does not use any personally identifiable data, nor does it rely on media metrics such as reach or frequency. In that sense, MMM is a very privacy forward form of measurement and isn’t impacted by cookie decay at all.

More broadly speaking, the death of the cookie shouldn’t alarm marketers. MTA models powered by cookies have always been inaccurate and deeply skewed towards digital channels. And consumers don’t like having their data collected in this manner. In that sense, the death of the cookie is a really great opportunity to reorientate measurement around robust business data and start using solutions like market mix modelling to make better investment decisions.

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