It’s Upfronts and NewFronts season—the high-stakes arena where brands place their bets on the best ad inventory across media channels. This is the moment to unleash your best data-driven decision making, and marketing mix modeling (MMM) is your unfair advantage. MMM insights empower brands to decode the true impact of every channel, network and daypart to forecast future outcomes with precision, and invest with confidence. With the latest advanced techniques, MMM reveals how media truly influences consumer decisions—turning the upfront season from a gamble into a growth strategy.
Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) Elevates Brands’ Strategic Insights
Today’s consumers are more sophisticated than ever. They recognize when brands are advertising to them, understand the targeting strategies across various touchpoints, and notice the frequency of these interactions. To effectively capture their attention without crossing the line into creepiness, brands need to identify the optimal touchpoints. Media Mix Modeling (MMM) can help pinpoint the best approach to optimize your media strategy while maintaining your brand’s integrity.
- Enables privacy-safe measurement approaches. With increasing privacy regulations and the decline of third-party cookies and tracking, MMM offers CMOs guidance on how to effectively measure without leveraging customer data and clicks. For example, Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) approaches do not require identity-based data to understand the performance of a Connected TV (CTV) or digital channel. Instead, using aggregated, privacy-safe data allows advertisers to effectively purchase media across various publishers, driving audience reach and ultimately increasing sales. CMOs can rest easy knowing that their customer data is not leveraged in these models or that nefarious tracking approaches weren’t used to capture that click.
- Analyzes complex relationships between touchpoints. According to our ROI Genome data, on average, about 45% of an ad’s impact is from a halo from another channel. Long gone are the days of associating a reach number to a television ad. Advanced modeling approaches allow for MMM to analyze media performance while accounting for other media investments, changes in economic conditions, or competitive ad spend. CMOs can gain more confidence in their investment strategies, knowing that every marketing and business driver is considered.
- Aligns your overall investment with the right audience. While MMM driven insights can guide your investment strategy, it can also unearth audience and network trends that will help your buys during the Upfronts and NewFronts. Brands can use these audience insights strategies from their MMMs to better pinpoint the appropriate audience to target and the right media and spots they should invest in. Further, MMMs can also dig up the best day parts and frequency of ads across audience segments that would drive the optimal results. As a result, advertisers can make more precise buys with partners that will provide the most bang for their buck.
Leverage the Power of Your Commercial Analytics Solution/Marketing Mix Model to Select the Best Media During Upfronts.
The ad ecosystem and media pricing are extremely turbulent because of variability in consumer media consumption, uncertain business performance due to tariffs, and new approaches to target audiences. Regardless of the factors that change the media ecosystem, marketing leaders need a clear view of their business objectives and to scenario plan out potential outcomes. Marketing mix models are well-positioned to navigate these uncertain changes. Marketing leaders should use the insights from their models to make data-driven decisions and account for these changes. To make the most out of your upfronts and newfronts investments, marketing leaders should:
- Analyze relationships between investments/channels. Before diving into ad space purchases through upfronts and newfronts, it’s crucial to dynamically analyze the relationships between your linear TV or CTV investments and other channels. For example, the WARC’s Multiplier Effect Study, featuring Analytic Partners’ ROI Genome analysis, reveals that linear television significantly influences search clicks across all channels. Use halo insights from channel interactions to optimize your ad buying process and ensure your brand doesn’t flood the market with ads, maintaining a balanced presence.
- Balance brand and performance marketing initiatives. In the dynamic landscape of advertising, balancing brand and performance strategies is crucial for maximizing returns. Brand advertising focuses on building long-term brand equity, while performance advertising targets immediate, measurable outcomes. According to Analytic Partners’ insights from the WARC Multiplier Effect study, the greatest payback comes when both approaches are integrated. This mixed strategy can improve total revenue ROI by 25% to 100%, with an average uplift of 90%. By using brand equity as an accelerant for commercial performance, advertisers can unlock exponential growth and ensure their media investments deliver optimal results.
- Use scenario planning features to optimize your media while considering other business and performance. Navigating the upfronts and newfronts season can be challenging for advertisers aiming to maximize their media investments. Utilizing a Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) scenario planner offers a strategic advantage by enabling advertisers to simulate various budget allocations and predict their impact on marketing performance. This data-driven approach helps in making informed decisions, optimizing media buys, and ensuring that investments yield the highest possible returns. Analytic Partners’ ROI Genome Report shows that brands that adopt scenario planning decisions achieve up to 70% higher ROI. By combining scenario planning with comprehensive analytic programs, advertisers can more accurately invest in media during the upfronts and newfronts that will fuel meeting their yearly objectives.
When navigating the upfronts and newfronts this season, don’t just guess—use your Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) to pinpoint where to invest your dollars. Leave some room for experimentation but always rely on data-driven approaches to select the best media to reach your audiences and grow your enterprise.
Want to elevate your MMM approach? Our Commercial Analytics solution is a sophisticated approach to MMM that considers all your business levers to help you make the best decisions for driving growth.
