In an era where marketers are challenged to do more with less, understanding the true drivers of marketing performance is not just an advantage—it's a necessity. While Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) has long been the gold standard for media effectiveness, a critical piece of the puzzle has been missing: creative quality. But now, things are changing faster than ever.
There's a growing body of evidence to show that a new wave of industry innovators are pioneering ways to integrate creative performance into MMM. This breakthrough—driven by AI and cross-industry collaboration—is finally making creative impact quantifiable at scale, a feat that seemed near unachievable, until recently. Vidmob captured this moment by bringing together leading industry minds for a qualitative research paper: The Next Frontier of Marketing Measurement: Unlocking Creative Impact in Marketing Mix Models. The paper features insights from leaders at Ekimetrics, Meta, Ebiquity, Analytic Edge, Objective Platform, and Kantar, all of whom underscore the critical need to formally introduce creative as a must-have variable in MMM.
Advertisers’ interest in measuring creative effectiveness within MMMs has surged, according to Matt Andrew, General Manager and Partner at Ekimetrics. “Creative used to only become a part of the conversation for more mature advertisers. Now, we see advertisers looking for creative measurement to be a part of the first stages of their measurement program.”
This shift is being driven by media fragmentation, AI-fueled content generation, and a growing recognition that creative can be as impactful, if not more, than channel choice. The proliferation of generative AI tools paired with a growing advertiser focus on gaining optimizations for insights through MMM is driving a more tactical use of MMM results, says Alfonso Calatrava, Third Party Measurement Lead, EMEA, at Meta.
“MMM has shifted from a high-level strategic tool to a more tactical decision-making framework," said Calatrava. "Generative AI tools are enabling high-speed, low-cost production work. With these two changes, advertisers can easily integrate new creative insights into execution strategies."
New approaches are transforming MMM into a tool that not only measures if something worked, but also why.
“With today’s fragmented media landscape, it’s critical to understand what else is driving performance,” says Stephen Lane, Managing Director at Analytic Edge. “That nuance is where creative data in MMM modeling proves its value.”
Analytic Edge, for instance, is experimenting with causal inference to link creative traits to KPI lift. Ekimetrics layers creative quality scores onto traditional media variables to better explain performance fluctuations. Objective Platform uses Bayesian models to integrate creative insights as priors, enhancing model accuracy and interpretability.
Simultaneously, major platforms and measurement firms are standardizing this approach. Kantar measures creative effectiveness by integrating granular digital asset analysis with performance data from media channels, combining both qualitative and quantitative metrics for a holistic view. Similarly, Meta is driving adoption by recommending that advertisers not only add granular creative data directly into advanced MMM frameworks, but also run regular calibration through incremental lift experiments (like conversion lift) to optimize both the actionability and the accuracy of the outcomes.
Across all approaches, scalable, AI-driven creative data emerges as a common thread. Quantifying creative choices at scale provides the granularity and consistency needed to enable MMM to accurately account for one of the top drivers of performance—the creative asset itself.
The payoff of bringing creative quality into MMM is twofold: more accurate models and smarter creative strategy.
“Incorporating creative data into MMM significantly improves attribution accuracy and campaign prediction quality. For example, for one major CPG advertiser high-quality creatives drove up to 36% stronger brand impact and 28% higher sales compared to average creatives, ” says Arno Witte, Senior VP of Data Science at Objective Platform.
Creative data has the potential to bring sharper, more nuanced insights into campaign results—unlocking new levers for ROI, informing better cross-channel planning, and bridging gaps between media, strategy, and creative teams. Alfonso Calatrava notes, “MMM models are only as good as the data that powers them, so enhancing the data input with valuable insights on creative execution allows practitioners to maximise the measurements’ actionability”.
While the potential is massive, the path isn’t without obstacles. Data continuity remains a hurdle, and quantifying creativity is at risk of oversimplification.
“The primary challenge is the sheer volume and complexity of creative data, which requires sophisticated analytical tools and scalable infrastructure,” explains Henrik Busch of Kantar.
However these challenges are not unsurmountable, Matt Andrew, Ekimetrics notes,“With continuous, consistent data from providers like Vidmob, it is much easier to create an index that allows you to combine both scale (impressions, GRPs) and quality (creative score) of activity into a single variable, allowing you to still measure many things without having to leave creative to the side.”
The challenges are real, but the return on investment is massive. Mastering them will let marketers get a clear view of how creative quality is truly fueling business growth.
Looking ahead, we can envision a more dynamic, integrated measurement ecosystem—where creative and media performance are evaluated holistically. AI will enhance diagnostic power, uncover new creative drivers, and even enable real-time asset optimization. While AI advancements are crucial for quantifying creative impact at scale, the true 'magic' remains in human insight.
“Creative success isn’t just about numbers,” says Richard Woodward, Analytics Group Director at Ebiquity. “It’s about connecting with people, and the evolution in MMM measurement helps us get closer to understanding how we do that.”
By uniting creative intelligence with marketing science, the industry has an opportunity to elevate effectiveness to new heights, bringing both the art and the algorithm to the center of the marketing mix. This is not just a vision; it's a reality being built today. The integration of creative data into frameworks like Objective Platform’s MMM, provides definitive proof: Creative quality is no longer subjective—it is both measurable and predictive.
The future of measurement is here. Get in touch to integrate creative data into your MMM’s and start unlocking new levels of effectiveness!