If marketers seize back control, what does that mean for agencies and media owners?

In part one yesterday, I outlined the clear potential benefits that market mix modelling can have and how it has the capacity to wrest back control from both the media agency and media owner.

However, market mix modelling is only a platform – a tool, if you will. It needs to be complemented by a framework of actions and aligned capabilities for successful delivery.

For any marketer thinking about setting it up you need to think about the following:

• Sales measurement – Today’s market mix models have an increased sensitivity to even minor changes in strategy. The accuracy of sales information is imperative to the reliability and relevance of findings.
• An appetite for change – Embracing change recommendations and challenging the status quo. Clients we have worked with, who set up MMM, have often been surprised by what they learnt but there’s no point setting it up if there’s no desire to adapt to the insights it will provide.
• Recognising both the value and limitations of AI – Market Mix Modelling and the AI it incorporates only raises the floor, it doesn’t lift the ceiling.
• As others within your category (read: your competitors) secure access to high quality algorithms it will help those operating inefficiently by driving them to the places that work where others are already getting results.
• It will cluster activities to the tried and tested environments at which point another fundamental principle of media kicks in ‘share of voice’ and typically only market leaders will benefit from the clustering of category activity.

Finally, there are limits to what a model or algorithm can tell you – the goal here is wrestle back control of the media spend and have some clearer sense of the media spend and return.