Hasta La Creative!

Marketing-mix models, since rising from relative obscurity a few decades ago, have become the de facto standard of evaluating return on investment, driving billions of dollars in marketing spending across industries.

There’s just one problem: Some critics believe the models have been wrong all along, and work even worse after three decades of change in the media landscape. They say the models underestimate the impact of advertising, particularly of broad-reach network TV; overstate the value of price promotion, mislead marketers into buying thinly rated programming; wrongly downplay risks of going dark for weeks on end; and fail to account for how online search has made all advertising more effective.

These critics up to now have been lonely voices on a wonky topic in the wilderness of a fast-growing marketing-analytics industry. But they’re about to get their day in court as the Council for Research Excellence preps a report on the pros and cons of marketing-mix models. That report will in turn form the basis of an Advertising Research Foundation inquiry into the quality of the models, led by CBS Chief Research Officer and ARF Chairman David Poltrack.

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