Google’s Meridian makes MMM more accessible

Google made its marketing mix model (MMM), Meridian, available to the public last week and launched a program of over 20 trained and certified measurement partners to help marketers use the tool.

• Meridian, an open-source model, combines past and present data for a more accurate, holistic view of performance.
• This can improve users’ understanding of campaign reach and frequency, help them allocate budgets more effectively, and enable integration of results from incrementality experiments.

Why it matters: Currently, MMM is best for high-level measurement, because it relies on aggregate rather than user-level data. But models like Meridian could give marketers access to more granular insights without investing in additional talent or technology.

• Over half (53.5%) of US marketers use MMM, according to a July 2024 survey from EMARKETER and Snap Inc.
• MMM is the type of measurement US marketers believe is best at identifying drivers of business value or outcomes.

“As marketers attempt to piece together a full, nuanced picture of how their paid media affects outcomes, the old-fashioned measurement tactic of MMM is coming back into vogue, and new players are rising to prominence,” wrote our analyst Evelyn Mitchell-Wolf in our “Ad Measurement Trends H2 2024” report.

• 56% of US ad buyers will focus on MMM at least somewhat more this year and 22% say improving MMM results is one of their top three goals for media investments in 2025, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s 2025 Outlook report.
• 53% of brand marketers worldwide believe econometrics/MMMs will become more important over the next two years, according to an October 2024 survey from Econsultancy.

Because it doesn’t require user-level data, MMM is a privacy-safe way to measure performance—an approach that will grow in importance as new privacy laws take effect and Google allows users to opt out of cookies.

The bottom line: Adoption of MMM is growing as tools like Meridian provide marketers with advanced capabilities.

• Google joins a variety of other platforms adding MMM to its suite of tools.
• By making this tool publicly available, it keeps Google Ads users within the Google ecosystem and prevents them from seeking out the measurement tools of a competitor.
• However, marketers still need to combine MMM with other forms of measurement—like incrementality testing and platform-level reporting—for the most accurate view of marketing performance.

This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.