Marketing mix modelling (MMM)
In practice, for a UK buyer
The paragraph above is the neutral answer. This is the part a vendor glossary leaves out.
Attractive because it needs no identifiers and covers television, cinema and out-of-home. Limited because it is correlational, hungry for history, and sensitive to specification — two competent modellers can produce materially different answers from the same data. AdBuyMCP labels anything modelled as modelled and keeps it strictly separate from a powered causal result; a modelled estimate presented as evidence of causation is exactly the failure its four-verb model exists to prevent.
What this one connects to
Most confusion in media buying comes from two adjacent terms being used interchangeably, so these are the neighbours worth reading next.
Incrementality
The share of an outcome that happened because of the advertising, measured against what would have happened anyway. Measured by comparing an exposed group with a comparable unexposed one, not by counting conversions that followed an advert.
Attribution
Assigning credit for an outcome to the advertising touchpoints that preceded it, according to a rule the advertiser chose. A description of correlation in a conversion path, not a demonstration that the advertising caused anything.
Modelled
A number produced by a formula or an estimate rather than counted directly from observed events, and therefore carrying assumptions with it. Deduplicated reach and frequency across channels are the common examples, since no single seller can observe the others.
Evidence provenance
A label attached to a number recording how it was produced — reported by the seller, observed on your own property, estimated by a model, or established by a powered experiment — so its strength travels with it.
More on measurement and evidence
What you can prove afterwards, and the difference between a number that means something and a number that does not.
45 minutes. Bring a real brief and we compile it live. You describe one audience and watch it compile into seven targeting specifications, each with the score for how much of the definition survived.
Talk it through