Marketing mix modeling (MMM) is experiencing a major resurgence, yet many brands struggle to make it effective. The focus often falls on reporting speed over actionable insights, while data challenges and an obsession with short-term ROI prevent MMM from becoming a true growth engine.
In a recent article for Performance Marketing World, our Global New Growth Officer Sam Fellows explored how to solve these common pain points and transform your measurement program.
What we covered in Performance Marketing World
Sam explored the common challenges that prevent marketers from getting value out of their MMM programs in this article, which was published in March 2026. Key points included:
- The MMM ecosystem is crowded and confusing, leading brands to choose solutions based on speed and cost rather than their ability to generate actionable insights.
- Poor quality, fragmented, and siloed data leads to unreliable models. Brands either feed “rubbish in, rubbish out” or become paralyzed in a quest for perfect data that doesn’t exist.
- An over-emphasis on optimizing for short-term ROI alone can damage long-term profit generation and reinforces the incorrect perception of marketing as a cost center.
Read the full article here: Making Marketing Mix Modelling Actually Work for Your Brand
Our view: Move beyond reporting ROI to realizing enterprise value
The obsession with short-term ROI is the most critical misstep a brand can make. While useful for tactical optimization, it is a KPI that fails to capture marketing’s full impact on business growth. At Gain Theory, we ground our measurement in a philosophy of driving enterprise value. This requires a shift in mindset from isolated channel metrics to a holistic view of business drivers.
Our HiFusion™ framework is designed for this purpose, connecting marketing, customer, and business insights to KPIs like profit and shareholder returns. It extends beyond media to incorporate drivers such as pricing, supply chain, and CX.
For one retailer, we implemented a unified measurement approach that analyzed the short- and long-term performance of three key brands against business KPIs and used scenario planning capabilities to optimize future plans. This identified $115 million in incremental revenue that could be generated via media optimization.
With over 50 years of marketing effectiveness innovation, our experience shows that connecting marketing to what the C-suite truly cares about is the only way to position it as a sustainable growth engine.
Explore further
Read more of our thinking about how to make MMM work:
- Making MMM Fit for 2026: An Essential Guide for Marketers
- Business Drive Modeling, Gain Theory’s unique approach to MMM
- How a multinational CPG company used MMM and scenario planning to maximize long-term profit
Want to understand how to make marketing mix modeling work for your brand? Contact us