Marketing mix modelling and cross-media measurement: Why marketers need both
Article 16 of 18 in series: The Great Reach Reset
Marketing mix modelling (MMM) helps marketers understand how media investment contributes to business outcomes, while cross-media measurement helps explain how audiences, reach and frequency are built across channels. Used together, they can provide a clearer picture of both what marketing delivered and how it delivered it.
There was a moment during this year’s World Cup final when I realised I was paying far more attention to the advertising than to the football itself. It wasn’t because the commercials were particularly creative or memorable, but because the match had become increasingly predictable. As only one team wanted to play football, my mind wandered towards something I spend a great deal of time thinking about: why some of the world’s largest advertisers continue to invest enormous sums in moments like these despite knowing that almost nobody will buy anything before going to bed.
The answer is, of course, that they are not buying immediate sales. They are investing in future demand by ensuring that millions of people notice them, remember them and, hopefully, think of them first when a buying situation eventually arises weeks or even months later. Watching those campaigns during the final made me realise that marketing has become better at measuring demand once it appears, yet remains surprisingly poor at explaining how that demand was actually created.
What marketing mix modelling tells us about business outcomes
One of the biggest advances in marketing over the past decade has been the renewed interest in MMM. As privacy regulation has made attribution increasingly difficult and customer journeys have become more fragmented, many organisations have rediscovered the value of understanding marketing through econometrics rather than simply counting clicks and conversions.
Grace Kite has played an important role in making that thinking accessible. Her work has helped marketers understand that marketing should be evaluated as a long-term business investment and that commercial impact rarely follows the neat, linear patterns that dashboards often suggest. Instead, marketing works by creating demand gradually, with its effects emerging over time rather than immediately after a campaign launches.
I completely agree with that perspective. But while reading Grace Kite, and then watching the World Cup final, I found myself thinking that our industry is now facing a different challenge.
MMM explains how investment translates into business outcomes. It tells us much less about how audiences were built across channels before those outcomes appeared.
Demand does not suddenly appear inside an econometric model. It is created gradually through audiences being reached across multiple channels, through repeated exposure over time, through distinctive creative assets becoming familiar and through brands remaining mentally available long before consumers are actively looking to buy.
Why cross-media measurement matters for understanding how demand is built
Take the World Cup final as an example. Those brands were not simply buying thirty seconds of television advertising. They were continuing conversations that had often started weeks earlier across connected TV, online video, social media, digital display, retail media and countless other touchpoints. For many viewers, the commercial during the final was simply another exposure that reinforced memories already being formed rather than the moment that suddenly convinced them to buy.
That raises questions that traditional business measurement was never designed to answer. How much incremental reach did each channel contribute? Which audiences were genuinely new, and which had already been reached elsewhere? How did different channels work together to build demand rather than simply repeat the same message? And at what point did additional frequency stop creating value and become duplication?
If future demand is built through audiences, reach, frequency, creative consistency and the interaction between channels, then understanding those mechanisms becomes every bit as important as understanding the commercial outcomes they eventually produce.
This is where cross-media measurement can complement MMM. While MMM helps marketers understand the relationship between media investment and business outcomes, cross-media measurement can provide a more granular view of how reach and frequency are being built across individual channels.
The next evolution of marketing measurement
Looking back, the most interesting competition that evening hadn’t taken place on the pitch.
It had taken place between some of the world’s biggest brands, all competing for something far more valuable than an immediate sale: a place in our memory.
The next evolution of marketing measurement is understanding how it was built.
This article is 16 of 18 in our series: The Great Reach Reset
About this article series
In a fragmented media landscape, reach is no longer a simple KPI - it is a strategic growth lever. In this article series, AudienceProject explores why advertisers are not failing at reach, but at measuring it properly, and why incremental, deduplicated cross-media reach has become essential to driving penetration, controlling frequency, and unlocking sustainable growth.
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