Understanding Google’s Open-Source Marketing Mix Model, Meridian
Google’s open source MMM is designed for marketers and data scientists; it helps them use various data points in a more nuanced manner and overcome the limitations of traditional marketing mix models.
For most parts, we as people consume brands in the process of going about our daily lives, whether it’s when we’re scrolling Instagram, watching a live stream, asking ChatGPT for a recommendation or making a google search for a product/service nearby. For marketers, understanding which touchpoint actually drive sales is critical.
Marketing mix modelling (MMM) has long been a trusted methodology for marketers to measure the effectiveness of their strategies. However, the landscape of digital marketing has evolved, demanding a more sophisticated approach. Enter Google Meridian MMM—a next-generation solution designed to provide accurate, privacy-conscious, and AI-powered insights into marketing performance. In this blog post, we look at the latest power-ups given to Meridian, and how it rivals leading marketing mix models, particularly in reference to features and benefits available to marketers and data scientists.
The decline of third-party cookies and increasing privacy concerns make traditional measurement methods less effective. Google Meridian MMM offers a viable alternative, ensuring businesses can continue to measure performance while respecting user privacy.
With Meridian, marketers can:
optimise their strategies for better results
allocate budgets better, and
forecast sales in the future using past trends data
With Meridian, marketers also have the option to input external factors like economic shifts and competitive pricing into the model's analysis.
However, despite its potential, Meridian is far from perfect. It's best use as a tool rather than a one-stop-solution for all your marketing problems. Meridian struggles with:
detecting sudden marketing changes
understanding customer journeys precisely
separating upper vs lower funnel
Meridian helps marketers figure out not only the best channels driving highest ROI for the business, as well as guides the interplay between these different channels, so they can test strategies before allocating budgeting efforts.
The latest features made available in the latest update, Meridian offers free access to Google's MMM Data Platform. This gives advertisers access to essential data like impressions, clicks, and costs, along with useful extras like Google Query volume. Plus, advertisers have the flexibility to tweak the code and adjust model parameters to fit their specific business goals. When it comes to budgeting, they can evaluate decisions based on different key metrics like sales, website visits, and conversions.
What More Can Marketers Do?
There’s a lot more marketers can do to level up their measurement strategies beyond just relying on MMM. Think of it as adopting a layered approach — MMM is great for seeing the big picture and guiding budget allocation, but it won't break down the performance of specific ads or tactics.
Next, be picky about your vendors. Look for those with solid experience, a strong track record in data analytics, and clear measurement methods. Managing expectations is crucial too. MMM will give you insights into channel halo effects, ad decay, and optimal frequency, but don’t expect granular click-level data—it’s not built for that.
Need to dig deeper into ad performance? Try incrementality testing. Set up tests to analyze the impact of specific tactics, whether it's a display ad or a social campaign.
Finally, transparency matters. AI-driven marketing models can seem like a black box. Educate your teams and look for tools with explainable AI to help everyone understand how decisions are being made.