Closing the Gap: How Better Audio Data Is Transforming Media Mix Models

Here’s a stat that doesn’t make much sense: Consumers spend 21% of their media time with audio, but only 4% of budgets follow. The problem? Investments are largely driven by how (or whether) audio shows up in media mix models.

Thankfully, that’s changing—and fast. Audio is finally getting the measurement upgrade it deserves, and the future of how it shows up in MMMs is going to change the game for what it means to craft a successful advertising strategy.

That’s exactly what we discussed in our most recent webinar. Joe Macarak, SiriusXM Media’s Director of Performance Partnerships - Media & Measurement sat down with Douglas Brooks, the Chief Client Officer at Ipsos MMA (our newest measurement partner). Together, they discussed how improved data precision, automated integrations, and industry-wide standardization are redefining audio’s role in MMMs.

Ready to dive in?

And if you’re short on time and just want the quick hits, we’ve got those too. Check out the top moments and key callouts from our conversation below.

Granularity and Speed Are Critical

“If we look across all of our clients today... the trend has been all around: How do we scale an MMM type capability that allows us to link results to incremental business impact? How do we account for outages from previous MMA type capabilities through this? So being able to use an MMM-based approach to get down to the placement-level or to align taxonomy-level measurement with planning. And how could we do this faster? You see this across the board… the grain and the speed are critical, because the granularity allows us to take a platform like digital audio and truly get into the nuances of the platform itself.” - Douglas Brooks

The Data Hygiene Component Is Crucial

“For a long time, we've had limited visibility as a publisher into our own data, and that created some blind spots out there—not having the product and the tech to send real data sets is something that we had to solve for as media suppliers in the audio space. So that's kind of where we've been around the limited visibility and the tech gaps—and we're incredibly excited around where we're headed. Through the validation of working with Ipsos, we’re really understanding how important the data hygiene component of this is… And we're hoping that those better connections with MMMs really allow us to produce these optimization moments.” - Joe Macarak

We’re in a Better Position Than Ever Before

“We're partnering with some of the best adtech out there—great partners like Innovid—to really help fuel our automation and really deliver a complete file around which incremental dimensions and metrics are really of value beyond what legacy streams are providing today… Having that data available and making it accessible puts us in a better position than we've been, including reach frequency, including daily impressions, cost data.” - Joe Macarak

What Made the Ad Successful?

“It's not good enough just to say you spent X amount, or ‘We delivered these impressions against this audience and here was the return on investment.’ We want to understand and link that all the way to sales and profit, but let's also understand what drove it. Was it the creative quality? Was it the ad format? Was it the frequency? Was it against a different audience? And then be able to use that [data] to continuously re-optimize.” - Douglas Brooks

The future of how audio is measured by MMMs is brighter than ever. Ready to see how you can work with us to build your next successful campaign to life? Let’s talk.

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