Food for thought

Most MMM programs don’t fail because the model is wrong — they fail because no one acts on the results. In our weekly LinkedIn show, MMMorning! – your Marketing Science wake-up call, I spoke with one of our customers, One New Zealand’s Lucile Ferraton, about what it really takes to embed MMM in a business. Her view? It’s not just about models. It’s about mindset, communication, and building the right rhythms inside the organisation.

Bayesian priors are a standard component of modern Market Mix Models (MMM),used to improve model stability and incorporate business knowledge. But when used incorrectly, priors can introduce significant bias into a model: where a model can be made to appear accurate but produce misleading results based on flawed assumptions.
Let’s look at how Bayesian priors function, how their misuse creates risk, and what questions to ask to validate the integrity of your MMM.

Let’s break down the real impact of AI and how tools like MAITE are making it relevant, actionable, and valuable for business. I cut through the AI noise in a conversation with my colleague Pratulya Kashyap, Staff Software Engineer, on our weekly LinkedIn show ‘MMMorning! – your Marketing Science wake-up call’. Here’s what we discussed…

Multicollinearity. It’s a mouthful — and not a word most marketers throw around at the coffee machine. But if you care about holding your media accountable and unlocking better measurement, you need to know it, or it can undermine even the best-laid media plans. So what exactly is multicollinearity, why does it matter, and how can you break free of its grip? In our 27 June 2025 episode of ‘MMMorning! — your Marketing Science wake-up call’, I discussed this hot topic with Nate Tomasetti, Staff Data Scientist at Mutinex.

Brand campaigns are often seen as the emotional engine of marketing — think big TV moments, storytelling, and long-term brand love. But in a world where every marketing dollar is under scrutiny, the question remains: if brand media isn’t built to drive immediate sales, why should we care about ROI that’s measured in months rather than years? In our 20 June 2025 episode of ‘MMMorning! — your Marketing Science wake-up call’ I discussed this hot topic with Grace Gilbert, Marketing Science Partner at Mutinex.

This guide will walk you through why validation is so critical and provide a practical framework for testing your model against the five most common and challenging pitfalls.