Analytic Partners

Open-source MMM made cheaper, not easier

Open-source marketing-mix-modeling (MMM) libraries have dramatically lowered the financial barrier to entry, but they have not reduced the statistical and domain expertise required to produce trustworthy results. The article highlights three production-grade open-source tools — Robyn (Meta), Meridian (Google), and PyMC-Marketing (PyMC Labs) — and describes a growing SaaS vendor layer built on those tools. Practical adoption blockers include data access and quality (e.g., two to three years of weekly, channel-level data and offline channel integration), the need for significant human judgment to configure and validate models, and the importance of organizational context. The piece warns that AI can help with scripting but not with the domain-specific decisions and validation required for actionable MMM.

Retail Media's Reckoning: Who Holds the Power?

The Drum’s Current Accountability episode argues retail media has entered a new phase: the rapid, easy growth is over and power is fragmenting among retailers, platforms and brands. Industry leaders warn many retail media networks are reaching onsite saturation, AI is reshaping product discovery (threatening retailer-dependent traffic), and networks must prove differentiation to capture brand budgets. Measurement and speed-to-action remain urgent problems—executives cite the need for objective cross-network measurement and a damaging "data-to-action" delay. Several companies describe efforts to unite brand and commerce media (connected commerce) to own the funnel end-to-end. The episode frames future growth as contingent on accountability, adaptability and rethinking where value is created across the commerce-media ecosystem.

Only 22% of Advertisers Consistently Use Analytics

Analytic Partners’ 2026 State of Commercial Decisioning Survey of 455 senior decision-makers at advertisers with ≥$1bn revenue (avg. marketing budget $100m) finds only 22% consistently use analytics to guide business decisions. This minority — dubbed 'Empowered Organizations' — produces an average of $40m in incremental annual sales (with some reporting >$120m) and achieves roughly 10% higher ROI versus peers. The report attributes their outperformance to enterprise-wide decisioning practices such as agile decision-making, scalable innovation, omnichannel precision and stakeholder alignment, and highlights econometric methods (Marketing Mix Modeling) and broader Commercial Analytics as primary decision frameworks. Nearly 40% of respondents identify MMM/Commercial Analytics as their primary source of truth for major allocation decisions. The article was published by The Drum on 2026-06-19.