Q & A: How Does Audio Show up in Media Mix Models (MMM)

How are you assessing and planning your media mix? If the answer is through MMM, then you likely have some questions about how these models work with digital audio. Media mix models aren’t new, but their popularity is growing again. And they’re evolving—especially when it comes to digital audio. 

Current models aren’t accurately reflecting the value of digital audio, relying heavily on impression and spend data and little else to assess both strength and performance. But we’re working to change that by investing in technology, working with third-party vendors, and developing industry standards. The fact is, we’re constantly innovating when it comes to measurement. That’s why we wrote the book on it: The Digital Audio Measurement Playbook.

With MMM being such a hot topic, we tapped an in-house measurement expert to walk us through where digital audio currently stands in MMMs and where it’s heading. Joe Macarak, Director of Measurement Partnerships sat down with us to provide responses to some common FAQs.

MMMs Are Currently Undervaluing Digital Audio

Question: What is audio’s current position in MMMs?

Answer: "Audio's current MMM position is what's known as media mix modeling. This captures short-term ROI effectiveness of media through the lens of impression and spend data only. As a result, bad forms of aggregated and low-quality audio data continue to be used by MMMs. Also, data historically used in MMM is not granular enough to optimize media beyond basic ROI outcomes. 

In addition, audio buys are serving dual roles, brand building and short-term ROI. However, models built for audio do not include or neglect long-term brand health impact versus models built for legacy platforms, such as search, social, and linear TV. This all results in MMM for audio not accurately reflecting what advertisers can expect from the medium in terms of long-term effectiveness and the role it plays in driving business for advertisers."

We Are Driving Innovation to Improve Data Quality in MMMs

Question: How is SiriusXM Media addressing MMM challenges?

Answer: “We have a three-pronged solution: 

• One, investing in proprietary technology to automate SiriusXM Media data delivery direct to MMMs, reducing scenarios of incomplete or inaccurate data which ultimately impact MMM outcomes. 

• The second being, we're partnering with third-party vendors Innovid and Flashtalking to extend impression tracking coverage and data delivery capabilities to allow MMMs to more accurately capture SiriusXM Media data and reflect audio's overall effectiveness. 

• Third, we're creating industry-wide partnerships with the IAB to push out white papers and studies around how to get audio measurement right.”

Accessible, High-Quality Digital Audio Data is Coming to MMMs

Question: What is SiriusXM Media’s MMM strategy?

Answer: “There are three key areas of focus: 

• The first being to make MMM data accessible and scalable. We're ensuring our platform data is widely available and easy to integrate into MMM models without friction. 

• Second, we're providing precise and granular audio data. This enables models to ingest as run delivered data sets to better correlate and represent audio advertising to sales impact. 

• Third, we're driving marketplace awareness and recalibration. We're promoting and commercializing the availability of more precise, better-quality ingrain their audio data for MMM accuracy in market. 

We're developing relationships where we work hand in hand with third-party MMM measurement providers, and we're continuing to run side-by-side measurement studies, attribution, brand lift, and conducting incrementality testing via match market and geo-holdouts to better calibrate MMM outcomes.”

Let’s Assess the Power of Digital Audio Together

Whether or not you use an MMM, digital audio is critical to your media mix. Streaming audio, podcasts, and SiriusXM radio follow consumers throughout the day, with listening peaking during prime shopping windows. Simply put, if you want to reach and influence consumers along the path to purchase—especially when they’re ready to buy—you need to get in their ear with digital audio.

Let’s talk.

Learn More About Digital Audio Measurement