Marketing often gets unfairly pegged as a cost center.
But that wouldn’t happen if marketers had access to better measurement that gave them clarity on what truly drives business growth, argues Henry Innis, CEO and co-founder of marketing mix modeling platform Mutinex.
“We don’t have a perception that marketing is a growth driver in the boardroom,” Innis says on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks. “That’s the tough truth for most marketers; we’re seen as a fungible cost.”
Obtaining that clarity can be expensive and time-consuming, though. Traditional MMM models look backward, focus mainly on media spend and frequently require bespoke rebuilds.
Mutinex uses an AI-based MMM system that draws on a wide range of business data and automates data processing so advertisers get insights more quickly and with less manual effort.
More streamlined measurement tools set the stage for difficult but necessary conversations about marketing’s true value.
Recently, Innis met with a CMO facing a budget cut along with the brand’s finance director. During the meeting, Innis asked the finance director a provocative question: “How much revenue are you willing to cut out of your forecast?”
In other words, since marketing is closely linked to revenue growth, cutting marketing spend should logically lead to lower revenue expectations. If only CFOs would see it that way.
“To get to that point,” Innis says, “you don’t just need a pretty dashboard with a bunch of ROI charts; you need well-governed, reproducible models that can stand up to financial scrutiny and audit.”
Also in this episode: Whether marketers can trust the measurement they get from walled gardens, how real is AI-assisted MMM and the argument that AI hallucinations are simply a reflection of human tendencies to make things up. (In fact, machines probably lie less than people do, Innis says.) Plus: Where the name “Mutinex” came from. (The closeness to cough and cold brand “Mucinex” is purely accidental!)
For more articles featuring Henry Innis, click here.
