Study Approach and Methodology:
While there is no “off the shelf” ready-to-go commercial product to address this gap, the MMA has created a methodology that has been vetted by marketers, publishers, academics, and MTA providers. The consensus is that this study will effectively help marketers identify the optimal mix of performance and brand marketing as well as the balance between reach and targeting for a more complete ROI from Marketing investment. This new approach has been designed around the following pillars:
- User Level / Deterministic Data: We believe that aggregated brand metrics don’t move, so our approach needs to use bottom-up, person-level data (unified IDs, not cookies)
- Employ MTA With the Use of Test vs. Control: We believe in the power of MTA to assign credit to media tactics and control for exposure over time, but we need to start with a clean data set that a true experimental design can provide.
- Measure Sales and Brand Metrics: We need to be able to collect and analyze both types of metrics, using survey data to measure band favorability and actual sales conversions over time.
- Assess a Compete Range of Marketing Tactics: We will design an experiment that assesses the contribution of different tactics, targeting approaches, and creative intent.
- Big Scale and Pre-Matched: We need to ensure that we start with enough users given attrition over time, as well as the need to drill-down into sub-groups.
An Industry Consortium to Lead Marketers to the Right Answer
The insights from this research will be highly valuable to both marketers and media companies. Without this research:
- Marketers will continue to base media planning on precedents and short-term tools that lead to media decisions that might not be serving the brand’s best interests, all told.
- Media companies will remain pigeon-holed as performance vs. brand plays without solid evidence, preventing their ability to effectively compete for more parts of the marketer’s ad budget.
Links to Documented Evidence
The following include documented evidence utilized within the research: