With a greater focus on the protection of user-level data, methodologies that rely on direct attribution are increasingly being challenged. This shift has led many marketers back to trusted methodologies that rely on aggregated data to evaluate the impact of their investments.
One such methodology that has seen a major resurgence is Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM). MMMs are econometric models that aim to quantify the incremental impact of paid, owned, earned, as well as non-marketing channels on business KPIs. They allow brands to understand the drivers of return on investment (ROI) and optimize budget allocation towards the channels and partners that will holistically deliver results.
While MMM has been a staple of marketing measurement for a long time, we are seeing increasingly innovative approaches to how models are built, calibrated, and acted on. The reason for the resurgence is because MMMs are privacy-safe, never relied on cookies and hence, remain unimpacted by ATT and other market changes. In this post, we will discuss the trends that we’re seeing and how Snapchat can support marketer’s goals of getting the most out of their MMMs.
Snapchat in MMM – Reveals Our Oversized Contribution
Snap has built a large volume of historical MMM evidence and most recently completed a meta analysis with TransUnion. This analysis highlighted that Snapchat disproportionately contributes to marketing-driven sales. When looking at return on ad spend (ROAS) by media channels across all the categories, the analysis found that Snapchat outperformed Paid Social in aggregate across all verticals. Not only does Snapchat drive ROAS, but it does so disproportionately more than competitors.
Building a Modern MMM and Including Snapchat – Follow Best Practices
When including Snapchat within models, it is important the following guidelines are met. While these are just a few examples, they highlight how advanced practitioners are leveraging MMM to deliver on their marketing goals:
Activate with scale, measure with granularity - While not every partner / tactic will be broken out in MMM due to modeling feasibility, aim to build plans that can be evaluated at a partner level to allow for granular budget allocation. Snapchat recommends activating for a minimum of 4-5 consecutive weeks per quarter at 10-15MM impressions per week to allow for a Snapchat-specific read.
Capitalize on Snapchat education and expertise - Given the uniqueness of Snapchat as a platform it is key to ensure brands and measurement partners fully understand Snapchat’s audiences, ad products, metrics and data. Check with your Snapchat rep to see if your MMM provider is part of our certified partner list.
Get Snapchat data, direct from Snapchat - Ensure data feed received directly from Snapchat, customized to aligned with your model specification
Always quantify Snapchat separately - Always measure Snapchat as a separate, distinct media tactic
Know what makes up the mix - For brands leveraging multiple ad products, decompose where possible, prioritizing Snap ads, Lenses and Commercials
Build a Model – Assess Performance With Your Snapchat Team
Once advertisers finalize their MMM’s, Snapchat recommends reviewing the results with Snapchat counterparts in order to add context, evaluate executions versus performance pillars and identify optimization opportunities. Optimizations identified in MMM diagnostics can serve the foundation for future learning agenda. At Snapchat, we have partnered with key third-party MMM suppliers to understand Snap's performance in these models across categories.
Snapchat also recommends leveraging measurement experiments, such as geo-lift and brand lift studies to calibrate MMM outputs. While using multiple measurement methods to evaluate the same execution may seem counterintuitive, a disproportionate reliance on one methodology will impact speed of iteration and reduce decision errors.
Hear how key partners have been working with Snap on MMM: Client Quotes:
Conclusion
When using MMMs, ensure Snap-sourced data is being used within your models for the most granular results. Reach out to your sales lead or Marketing Science Lead for more info and for the recommended data inputs.
While MMMs are a popular, privacy-safe, holistic way to measure a platform's performance, we would recommend not using these in isolation to measure success. Brands should use a combined approach that uses alternative solutions to fill in the gaps. If you’d like to learn more, read about our measurement philosophy here.