Data and measurement are starving brand investment

Opinion

While MMM is generally a good technique for judging channel effectiveness, we must be aware of its various blind spots — most notably, the way it undermines the importance of brand-building.

I’ve spent a large part of my career beating up the accuracy of attribution and the abundance of other digital metrics, and the large unintended consequences of following the guidance of these reports.

Thankfully, it feels like these common pitfalls are now more commonly understood. But I fear that sometimes the industry has replaced one form of data bias with another.

And I worry that I have been part of this problem. The natural conclusion to a discussion when I am critical of following digital signals and their associated metrics is for a marketer to ask: “So how should I judge the effectiveness of our advertising?”

While I try to give a full answer in talking about “mixed measurement models”, we usually end up in a conversation about marketing mix modelling (MMM), as I believe it to be the most accurate and comparable technique for judging channel effectiveness.

In 2025, I see all manner of different businesses using MMM as an evaluation technique. This feels like significant progress, but I am increasingly seeing MMM adoption as having some unintended consequences.

MMM blind spots

While I remain an advocate of MMM, I think more businesses need to be aware of its numerous blind spots and weaknesses, as there is a significant danger in just supporting what MMM reports as the media channels with the highest return on investment (ROI).

Notable blind spots come from the focus on media (at the expense of creative) and reporting media channels as a homogenous mass of singular ROI effectiveness (not every social media ad delivers the exact same ROI, for example).

But I think the biggest watch-out is that MMM undermines the importance of long-term brand-building.

How and why does MMM undermine brand-building? Like any measure of success, MMM is time-bound. It looks at revenue that can be statistically connected to advertising.

Typically, MMM has a reporting window of around 12 weeks. If we follow this thought through to its logical conclusion, in using MMM we are effectively saying that there is no benefit from advertising that can be seen beyond that 12-week window.

The 12-week window of advertising effectiveness is clearly untrue. Like most people, I can vividly remember advertising messages I saw as a child. I’m talking about messages I saw 30-40 years ago that still shape my thoughts and perceptions of brands, at least on some level, to this very day.

I associate John Lewis with Christmas. I believe BMW is a good and reliable car brand. I know McDonald’s delivers cheap and reliable food. And my perception is that Apple produces products that are consistently good, as well as being easy to use.

These thoughts have nothing to do with the last few ads I have seen from the brands; they are perceptions built up over a lifetime of ad exposures and brand-building.

Benefits of brand-building

To my knowledge, the advertising delivered to me by those brands has not once created any sort of direct response effect in my own behaviour (and, yes, I am aware that self-reported advertising attribution might not be very accurate…). But does it mean that their advertising was ineffective?

Absolutely not.

The advertising has contributed towards my personal and positive brand image for these brands. The result is that I am willing to pay a price premium for these brands, even though my rational brain is keen to tell me that more budget-friendly options are available.

And this is how profits are generated. Serious profits.

Let’s take Apple as an example. Its hero product, the iPhone, drove just 21% of global smartphone sales. Yet Apple’s relatively small volume play resulted in 50% of total smartphone revenue and a staggering 82% of the category’s profit.

This isn’t just a technology-driven play. It happens in many different categories: the market leader commands a significant price premium. Think of your own shopping habits. Even in these times of economic squeeze, the bestselling FMCG brands are also the most expensive in their category; think Heinz ketchup, Hellmann’s mayonnaise or Branston pickle.

This trend can also be seen in most other categories; fashion, automotive and insurance all have their own examples that fit this trend.

Profit over revenue

In an MMM view of the world, revenue is revenue.

Yet businesses are usually aiming for profit over revenue — at least in the long term. Driving brand reputation is the most tried-and-tested method of commanding a profit. Brand-building allows companies to take the same raw inputs as their competitors and command a larger sales volume and profit margin from their brand.

MMM does not recognise these brand-building benefits very well so, as a marketing community, it is highly important that we do not forget this blind spot.

“What gets measured gets managed” is an astute observation of how most businesses operate, but those commanding the largest profits also understand that some of advertising’s most powerful secret sauce is something that is not easily measured, quantified or attributed to individual advertising touchpoints.

Aidan Mark is media science and strategy director at Bicycle London