Beyond the Traditional Marketing Mix with Ben Galvin, Sr. Director of Omnichannel Retail Sales & eCommerce at Monster Energy Corporation, Ash McMullen, Head of eCommerce at Advantice Health, and Donna Sharp, Managing Director at MediaLink

Transcript

Our transcripts are generated by AI. Please excuse any typos and if you have any specific questions please email info@digitalshelfinstitute.org.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (00:00):

Welcome to Unpacking the Digital Shelf, where industry leaders share insights, strategies, and stories to help brands win in the ever-changing world of commerce.

Peter Crosby (00:22):

Hey, everybody. Peter Crosby here from the Digital Shelf Institute. As retail media spending explodes and traditional measurement methods struggle to keep pace amidst inconsistent KPIs across retailers, marketing mixed modeling finds itself at a critical crossroads. New research from MediaLink and the Digital Shelf Institute lays out the challenges and evolving best practices in MMMs to transform marketing mixed models from a quarterly planning tool into a dynamic real-time strategic asset. This is an audio rebroadcast of a webinar focused on that research led by Lauren Levak Gilbert featuring Ben Galvan, senior director of omnichannel retail sales and e-commerce at Monster Energy Corporation, Ash McMullan, head of e-commerce at Advantis Health, and Donna Sharp, managing director at MediaLink.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (01:15):

Thanks again for joining the webinar. And while you're waiting, we encourage you to scan the QR code to download the report. If you haven't read it yet, it's a great resource and we're going to go through the highlights. Hello, everyone. We are going to kick off. Welcome to today's Digital Shelf Institute webinar in partnership with MediaLink. My name is Lauren Levak Gilbert and I lead the Digital Shelf Institute. Thank you for those who are members. Thank you for those who are joining, and we are excited to welcome you into our community. Today is the hot topic of measurement and talking about marketing mixed models, how they're working today, how they can work for the future. And we have a lot of great conversation. We have two great brands with us, and we're going to deep dive into a research report that Donna and I, DSI and the MediaLink collaborated on.

(02:06):

So again, feel free to scan the QR code. We will drop the link in the chat so that you can download it as well. So just to kick off, want to give just a quick intros to everyone so that you know who will be on the call. Like I said, Lauren Lee got Gilbert, excited to be here from the DSI. I'm going to pass it to Donna to just do a short intro.

Donna Sharp (02:26):

Excited to share the findings of our collaborative research today. I'm Donna Sharp, managing director for MediaLink, a UTA company, and leading our commerce and retail media practice here. Let's go, Ben.

Ben Galvin (02:48):

Sorry, everyone had trouble. Ben Galvan with Monster Energy. I lead our e-commerce and omnichannel business here at Monster Energy. We manage everything from the third-party marketplaces to B2B, as well as a lot of what we're doing with regards to the SEO and the AEO environment. Thanks for having me.

Ash McMullen (03:08):

And hi, I'm Ash McMullan, head of e-comm at Advantis Health. Been in the e-comm sphere for over 16 years now, and excited to chat MMM. It's always a part of our conversations will continue to be, and it is never changing. So thanks for having me.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (03:29):

Awesome. Thanks everyone. And just to set the stage for the day, similar to any webinars you've been in in the past, there is a Q&A module on the right-hand side of your screen. If you have a question, drop it in there. We will be getting to questions at the end of the webinar. There's also a chat, so feel free to add comments and thoughts throughout the conversation today. We will be talking about the research and then moving into a fireside chat for the second half of the webinar. We're going to talk about where are we today in terms of retail media and MMMs, what brands are saying about them, where there's areas of opportunity, and really kind of what are those next steps about incorporating all the things we're talking about into your measurement models. So I'm going to pass it over to Donna who's going to talk us through the report.

(04:15):

Take away.

Donna Sharp (04:18):

So why did we do this research? Really, both Lauren and my personal lives, our professional lives, and everyone who's on this call came together because the world of marketing and commerce has never been more challenged to better understand how we are driving consumers through the funnel and to drive conversion. We really set out to do this research to understand a major element of the marketplace that is rewriting the rules of marketing and commerce, and that is retail media, and ultimately how you measure something that is now, for some of you on the call, I know, based on our research, taking over 20, 30, 40, maybe 50% of your historical marketing budgets and meant to drive much more than just sales and conversion. So we were able to field both a survey as well as have in- depth interviews with many amazing commerce leaders, including Ash and Ben.

(05:14):

And we want to talk a little bit today about what we found in the research. What are some of the opportunities and questions you should all be asking? And by the time we get to the end of this call, my hope is you will join us in our rally cry to make measurement better for the industry overall. So where do we stand today? As I mentioned, this was really a culmination of what the marketplace needs to better understand. Retail media has not only been growing over the past few years, it is continuing to be the fastest growing advertising channel through 2027. And that means that retail, commerce, is that even really the right definition? Is it media? Is it sales? Well, when it's starting to eat into, as I mentioned, sometimes 20, 30, 40, 50% of your historical marketing budget, it has to do both.

(06:02):

And that's why we are starting to see much more scrutiny against the expenditures in retail, trade, shopper as it relates to marketing and vice versa. How is marketing actually driving commerce goals? Now, historically, with the rise of retail media, many of the retailers focused on return on ad spend, very conversion based metrics, but now many of our retail partners, some of which are on the call today, have been building lots of different ad and media formats that go far beyond just driving conversion, mid-funnel, upper funnel, driving awareness, driving consideration. And so how do we think about measuring that? Ultimately, when you measure beyond ROAS and transaction, we had to go back to the tried and true playbook for measurement for manufacturers for the last many, many decades, which is the beloved MMM. So we asked our constituents in a survey, and now we want to ask everyone who's here today, what best describes your current use of a market mix model?

(07:02):

Lauren, tell everyone how they can participate.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (07:05):

Yes. All right. So everybody should see a poll pop up on your screen on the right, please vote. And then once we give everyone a chance to vote, I see some of the votes coming in. We will share the results. So again, just go to the right hand side of your screen, choose one of those options and click submit. All right. We're getting some live results here. I will give everybody a couple of more seconds to come back and vote and close it in five, four, three, two. All right, here we go. Let's see what best describes your current use of MMM? It looks like we have 11 votes not currently considering an MMM. We have seven fully implemented and then six are piloting and five are planning to implement. So it looks like we have a mixed bag across the entire asset.

Donna Sharp (08:01):

I love it. We're going to have a raging debate. Ben, Ash, get ready. And what I will say is interesting is that in our macro survey, we did find that the majority of manufacturers that were surveyed had a fully implemented MMM, but we're excited to have many of you represented here today who have questioned that for all the right reasons. And we're going to talk about how you both make the most of your MMM or why you might want to go in a different direction. What was interesting that came up is that while the majority of folks that we surveyed were fully using an MMM in their system today, my guess is some of the reason why I think 11 of you said you are not, was the answer to a follow-up question. Are you actually confident in your MMM's ability to measure incremental impact across channels?

(08:53):

So while we saw over 50% of people fully implemented or planning to launch from a pilot mode, we have really neutral feelings about what our market mix model tells us when it comes to how to better spend our marketing dollars and how to better drive transactions. And we really wanted to dig in on why are people spending both the amount of money and the time and the resource that gets to market mix model outputs if they're not even confident in what they're learning from that. So let's dig in on what some of the challenges are and hence why we're here to discuss a debate today. We have continuously talked about a lack of standardization specifically in retail media. And so we found a lot of commonalities between challenges within market mix models overall, as well as the challenges in measuring the retail media world. As many of you know, retailers have different definitions of how they calculate their core KPIs.

(09:58):

Obviously, they have granular data on themselves, but may have different methodologies to calculate ROAS, to calculate incrementality that don't always marry up to what you as a manufacturer are doing. And the same has certainly happened when we have ported over this type of data into retail media. What we've found was the most common feedback is that we can't get specific enough with an MMM. If I'm a commerce leader, I really need to be able to prepare for my conversation with Walmart, with Kroger, et cetera, and it's not providing the type of data that I need. Also, the level of granularity is not there, both from how I'm activating, so where I'm putting my dollars in tactics and placements, elements of shopper, different trade promotions, new types of offsite media, and can I get to the level that is meaningful to my day-to-day optimizations? Many marketers are in the shift from more annual or quarterly or campaign based optimizations to working in real time.

(10:57):

Commerce leaders have always had to work in real time. So there's been a bit of a conflict in bringing those things together, which is why we also asked, "What type of data are you even inputting into an MMM?" And so it was interesting, I think, to understand the way in which MMM is being used to measure some of the types of investment and outcomes that can come from that against where that money is moving. And you'll see we had disparate results in terms of what was included. In particular, when you think about retail media, it was significantly more likely that onsite was included than offsite. And that makes sense for a lot of the major retail platforms like Amazon, but for those of you, particularly in the food and beverage space where your core partners are largely offsite retail media offerings, it felt that this was largely left out of the mix and understanding, especially if that's an area of growth of where you're putting your dollars, there was a desire to really understand how that is growing your business.

(11:58):

And a second area of discussion was around how frequently you're able to get these insights. So as I mentioned, we have very different speeds and modes in which leaders in an individual organization are operating. If you're responsible for commerce, you need to be looking on a day-to-day basis at what type of movement you are seeing in terms of velocity sales at a SKU level. If you are a marketer, you're often thinking, yes, both in terms of some of short-term, but also long-term. And so it's not shocking that the majority of MMM results are coming out annually and quarterly, not to mention because it is highly expensive for you to try to do it more frequently today. And this is where we started talking quite a bit more about how you can improve the speed and the level of insights that you get, but also triangulate with other types of measures.

(12:49):

And I know Ash and Ben have lots of personal experience in that that they'll be able to speak to. So a core area of focus and a takeaway, which I hope you'll all get to dig into more in the white paper was how do you set up the right taxonomy, the right structure to ensure that you are measuring both the right level of granularity at the right time and against the correct goals? As I mentioned, many of us are starting to have an interplay between what we're considered commerce or sales or trade tactics and what we're considered marketing or traditional media tactics. And so really understanding the goals that are meaningful and the data that you need as inputs will allow you to be measuring against the right KPIs. And it may not be just short-term sales. And so this is really a critical question to be asking.

(13:39):

Now, this seems maybe easier said than done, but one of the areas that we found to be the biggest barrier to having a really robust measurement model that can speak to marketing and commerce needs is who is ultimately owning that measurement practice. And so it's time for another poll. We want to see where things stand within our audience and ask you if you have a market mix model or something similar, who owns that within your organization? What team or what leader actually owns the design execution of market mix models?

Lauren Livak Gilbert (14:15):

And same thing as last time. It will pop up on the right hand side so you can vote. Just click on your selection, either marketing, IT, e-commerce, analytics, or other. If it is other, type it in the chat and we can see and have a conversation about where else it lives inside your org. Okay. We will give everyone a couple more seconds. It looks like we have a ton of votes coming in. Wow. There's definitely one winner coming through. Let's see. I will give everyone a couple of more seconds to vote. Five, four, three, two ... All right, closing it out. So it looks like 58% of people on the webinar have MMMs sitting in marketing. Then the next winner, 22% in analytics, nine in e-commerce. And from another perspective, there's a mix of marketing and e-commerce or marketing and analytics, which I think makes a lot of sense in terms of a partnership.

Donna Sharp (15:18):

Amazing. Thank you all for contributing. And what we found was very similar in the broad survey, which was that maybe it's hidden in the name, marketing mix model, that the marketing team still tends to own the MMM, which is perhaps why we're not seeing the right level of granularity, velocity to support commerce decisions as well. But really what we found is when these teams are not connected and aligning on what are the inputs against what KPIs and therefore what we would want to choose to optimize against the outputs that we receive, that's where we're having gaps in the ability to make the measurement really valuable, particularly against retail media. So what I want to do is quickly hit on the key takeaways and then dig in on how Ash and Ben have individually gone through this journey within their organizations and some of the learnings that they can share.

(16:14):

And so I want to call on everyone who's joined us on today's call to encourage you that there is an opportunity to move with the market and invest in the future. Our white paper digs in on some of the evolution in MMM and also the blending together of MMMs with other more real time data, utilizing generative AI to drive the more realistic decisions that you have to make in the moment. We're looking back at last year's Q4 and today's sales just isn't enough for you to be able to make a decision. So how do you combine those together? As I mentioned, sharpening that goal is absolutely critical. So blending together what are the marketing and the commercial levers simultaneously to know what it is that we're driving. And it's okay if there's more than one goal, as long as you understand which measurement methodologies give you which answers.

(17:05):

When we think about standardizing KPIs and aligning methodologies, this is a call to action to all of you, including retailers and measurement companies who may have joined us on the webinar today. We truly believe that standardization is critical to be able to compare both, of course, the commerce realities of incrementality, but also it is called retail media for a reason. And so if you're continuing to compete for more mid-funnel and upper funnel media dollars, you need to be able to look consistently and also represent the value that is presented by the retailers. So we want all manufacturers to come together striving for alignment in not only the metrics themselves, but the methodologies and statistical approaches that are used to feed into measurement approaches. And lastly, this relates to transparency. So it's one thing to be able to measure, but you have to have access to the right information.

(18:03):

And I know many of you, including those that we interviewed in our surveys, shared some of the gaps that you have within the actual data scientists to mine the level of data that you can have access to. But with the dramatic increase in technology-driven innovation and analytics, we're excited to no longer have that as an excuse for lack of transparency from partners, particularly as you're moving to offsite media. And so you're starting to compare platform to platform where you can purchase directly and where a retailer may be purchasing on your behalf. So these are some of the opportunities we found at a macro level, but excited to dig in with Ash and Ben on how they have taken measurement within their own organizations and really made it more meaningful to drive their business.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (18:47):

Perfect. Thanks so much, Donna. So now we're getting to the Fireside Chat part of the webinar. So really excited to have Ben and Ash here. Just a friendly reminder, if there are questions that come up during the Fireside Chat, throw them into the Q&A module and we can get to them after we go through this. Okay. So let's start off with a question around your teams and how you're thinking about MMM in your organization. So Ash, why don't we start with you? Many teams kind of struggle with where MMN sits and then how you educate teams and how to talk about it. Can you say a little bit more about how you help educate and answer those questions?

Ash McMullen (19:25):

Yeah, happy to. And I'm also realizing I really didn't explain anything about Advantis Health. So we're a private equity owned portfolio of brands. And so this gets even deeper into the understanding of an MMM because there's six brands that are in our house of brands and we're all in the health and skin health personal care categories. So when you have a marketing team that's spanning different brands and you have a media agency that's also helping you interpret all of the learnings that an MMM and data that this MMM is giving you, the lines get very blurry. And kind of where we take a step back and really look at it as like, what are the questions we're trying to answer within this tool and using this tool and understanding where we're going and what we're using this tool for then helps drive the education of what it actually is because we all want it to be this magic dashboard that pulls everything that we want into it and then just gives us this beautiful visual that is intuitive that we can put in front of a board or an executive leadership team and be like, "Look, this is how we're doing and this is what we use to make our decisions." So I don't know if we're there yet, but that's kind of where we hope to be going, but it's really just breaking it down and saying, "Okay, we're trying to answer the question of is our streaming TV effort driving all of our channels?

(21:05):

Is it driving Walmart and Target or is it just driving Amazon or is it driving all three or do we not really know? " And using that tool to very clearly state what we're trying to find the answer to and then using the data that it gives us to really discern that answer.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (21:24):

Awesome. Thanks, Ash. Ben, what about from your perspective?

Ben Galvin (21:28):

Yeah, I think one of the big components as you think about internal education is the importance understanding that it's not a crystal ball. We see it as an opportunity to see in that kind of rear view mirror, but it allows having a GPS on what happened. One of the big components that we have constantly looked at in a previous life as well as this current role is how do we bring in more departments to get a better perspective of their understanding on helping to guide where this goes. This isn't necessarily going to tell us what campaign we need to do next where, but it will tell us that guide and the path forward and how it applies to IT, how it applies to marketing, how it applies to digital marketing. And that's where as we've brought people through this journey and an experience where we did onboard it on an MMM a few years ago at a previous company, structurally we were able to help understand within leadership across different divisions that there may be different metrics that everyone's looking to get out of this, but most importantly, it's an understanding of what this can deliver, but then at the same respect, understanding the gaps.

(22:35):

And one of the big components around the gap component, the gaps is helping them to say, "Hey, is this a priority or is this not? " And that's when one of the things that we are still working on in a lot of companies are today.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (22:49):

I think that's a great point, Ben. And similar to just e-commerce education overall, right? You need to make sure every function who touches it or reads about it or interacts with it, understands their part and how they can use it. So I really love that point that both of you made around the cross-functional education piece and kind of transitioning into the next question similarly around cross-functional, we asked this to the group, we asked this in our research around who owns MMM in your organization. So it'd be great to hear from you who owns it, but also who's responsible for acting on the insights, because I think that might be a slightly different answer. So Ben, how about we start with you on that one?

Ben Galvin (23:28):

I think in any organizations, it's important that there's almost a task force that owns this in the organization. I think if one department owns it, it almost becomes siloed into what's important for them or their leadership. So I think as any organization looks to bring in an MM or even has one, putting together a task force that's almost across minimum three departments is going to be so important because if you think about the different departments, whether it's IT, marketing, digital marketing, shopper, or even sales, they're going to have different insights. So again, the plethora of data available by department is only going to make the inputs from an internal data that much stronger than challenging that, call it MMM third party company you're working with to then bring applicable outside or external insights to mirror up to what you can bring. And that just makes a more robust structure.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (24:20):

I love that point. Ash, what are your

Ash McMullen (24:21):

Thoughts? Yeah. To build on that, I mean, one of the things that we are very ... It's one of our anthems internally is like our roles and responsibilities are dynamic. The environment we live in changes every day, sometimes multiple times per day. And we have to be adaptable and flex with that. And this is part of it. It's not one team or one person that owns it and who owns it at one point when we're using it and may change also like when we're trying to find the answers to those different questions, we're trying to get to the answers up so we can make those decisions to ultimately drive profitable growth for the business. So it may be a question from sales, it may be a question from supply chain and operations. So it's really about being dynamic and fluid in that and understanding that question and where is the answer.

(25:23):

To your point about like who actually owns the action and who executes the decision, that definitely is a different piece of this. And for us, we work very closely with a media agency that handles everything from our retail media, onsite search, offsite display, and also our paid social. So all of our activations outside of that as well. So that's who we come together with and say, "Okay, here's the question we're answering, here's the answer we have. " And then this blend of art and science with like our own intuition of what makes sense in pulling in other variables because we're not just taking this for a hundred percent of, this is the end all and be all. There are other variables that it takes the human touch to have those dialogues, but ultimately who executes the optimization and the shifts falls to our agency partners.

Donna Sharp (26:30):

This is such a critical point about alignment, especially when for many organizations that we spoke about, the investment is big, not just from a dollar standpoint because the white paper does showcase a few different options, some of which can be more cost beneficial to you, but it's the resources. It's the amount of time that's put into gathering inputs, to analyzing the outputs, and to taking those actions ultimately. And I think what Ben and Ash have both been able to articulate is that critical cross-functional approach at both the outset. So how are we designing it so that there is trust for those to take action even outside of your walls? Because many of the folks that I see on today's call do have an agency activating on their behalf. And so if there's not true trust in the data and therefore the actions that you would take as a result of the data, then it serves as a bottleneck for debate and discussion as opposed to something that people can take action on.

(27:28):

And that was one of the things that we found in our survey is sometimes the larger the company, the more difficult this is because simply just getting that alignment and clarity, often when we mentioned that over 40% of people were pretty neutral on, do I trust this data, it was because, well, yes, the marketing team trusts the data, but not necessarily anyone else in the organization. And if the marketing team is not negotiating those larger JVPs with your retailers, then it's not really that useful.

(28:09):

I think Ash is chiming in with something brilliant, but I can't hear her guys.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (28:12):

Yeah, Ash, we can't hear you. Sorry. I was wondering if that was just me or not. We talked about- How about

Ash McMullen (28:17):

Now? Oh, there. Oh, okay. You're back. One thing to your point on trust, if you're working with a media agency, make this a true partnership because they are acting on your behalf, they are acting in the best interest of your business. And there's a lot of MMM softwares out there and deciding which one to go with is a huge decision. And that's something that is a great opportunity for brands to partner with their agencies and go through that process together and decide which is the best tool for us if your media agency doesn't already have one or if you're seeking one and they are going to have access to it and however that looks like or whatever that looks like within your organization, it's just a good opportunity to partner together where you're in it together and there's this true partnership and that trust is this nice foundation of what you're trying to do together.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (29:19):

And I think Ash, that hones in on the art and science of this, right? It's not something that it's like, "Hey, we take this for face value. We're doing everything with this and this is our kind of north star." It's an indicator, right? It's a piece of the puzzle that you consider, but you have to have those conversations and that collaboration. So I really, really love that point. And you mentioned this a bit, Ben, when you were talking about your answer around having the right data from the right teams, and so did you, Ash. If you don't have those data inputs, then you're not actually going to get the right results. So how do you figure out what resources, what data you need to feed into your MMM so that you can have that educated conversation with your leadership and they're confident in The results.

(30:01):

Maybe I'll pass this one to BIM.

Ben Galvin (30:03):

Yeah. I mean, it's important to realize that initially retail media spend is usually tied to actual store sales. As you look at the resources component of it didn't move a cart or drive incremental lift, it's just noise in the model. One of the big components that's so important when walking down this path of identifying resources or data imports is how clean is it on both sides? So you think about clean sales data, accurate media spend, and even the promotional calendars, they all need to be brought into the fold when you think about the data inputs that go into that, because those are the ones you can then easily point to, especially with leadership, to say, "Hey, this is the call it source of where the data comes," and then you can kind of tie it back. I think that's what's so essential about producing MMM results in a lot of ways is using the actual either metrics or KPIs that frankly leadership is used to.

(31:00):

But again, making sure it's as clean as possible, knowing that call it the source to it is a little different than running a Sercana report or a Nielsen report.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (31:10):

And that's that education piece. You need to make sure they understand the kind of data and what it's indicating. Ash, I see you laughing.

Ash McMullen (31:17):

I mean, everything that Ben is saying is true. I mean, and then there's this other piece of trust coming from transparency. So not everything is a rosy outlook. Not everything is about where's the good news headline in this data. And sometimes, especially right now, this has not been ... I wouldn't categorize 2025 as an easy year. There's been a lot of things that ... We're ready for the unpredictable working in just the e-comm realm. It's par for the course. This has been a very unique year. And sometimes transparency and like, no, the data's not showing great results. However, we have a plan because this great tool is helping us fill in the gaps that we need to understand and it's shaving off the time it would take for us to go manually mine all of these data points and piece it together so we can make a faster decision.

(32:22):

And this is the decision that we make and this is the outcome we anticipate seeing. So it's okay to come with a not so great report or like what could be seemingly be seen as a problem along with a solution and a path forward and a plan. So because sometimes that goes further than like everything's great.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (32:47):

Transparency like we talked about.

Ash McMullen (32:49):

Unilateral

Donna Sharp (32:50):

Transparency. The whole point of having a model that is for a mix of things is that you can't have everything be great. Everything is relative. And so many of our conversations, including with you, Ash and Ben, focused on how do I both leverage this type of data for in the moment decisions and then also really productive mutual conversations when it comes to the JBPs, right? Because in a wonderful way, there's a lot of innovation from retailers on new media offerings. You mentioned OTT and CTV, and there's a lot of social innovation coming from many retailers. So how do you understand what of those are actually working for you in the context has been mentioned of store sales with that retailer versus perhaps other metrics which maybe haven't been captured appropriately in the ROAS tracking. And then it's also okay to say, these are the things that are not working because as these retailers become true media companies with multiple products, I don't think you would go to any other media company and say, "Please give me all of your tactics and offerings and I would like to leverage them equally." You would have very strong opinions and data to support where you want to invest.

(34:03):

And that's the goal here is to have that same level of confidence in conversation with your retailers.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (34:10):

And Ash, you thought 2025 was a rough year? I mean, what? I'm just, what? That's crazy. No, I'm just kidding.

Ash McMullen (34:17):

I just wouldn't say it was easy. I always love a challenge. I mean, it's boring otherwise, but there's so many things going

Lauren Livak Gilbert (34:26):

On. 2026 has to offer. We're all kind of waiting to see what happens. So we talked about MMM being a piece of your measurement strategy, right? It's not the only thing it's directional. So let's hear from both of you. What else are you thinking about in terms of measurement and how you determine how to shift the business, what to do next, how to get those insights? Ash, what are your thoughts on that?

Ash McMullen (34:52):

So traditional MMM measurement I used to think is like a marathon. You'd look at it and change it like once or twice. And now we're like evolving into this more real time, what's going on, how do we make a decision faster? And we've gone from like this marathon to a sprint and it's allowing us to also test different things where we've always had an initiative to test and learn and fail fast and scale where we find success. This is an unlock for us to be able to do more of that and become more nimble because there's also this, what's working and what's not. There's also this question of like, are we doing too much? Are we spreading our dollars too thin in trying too many different things where again, like in the private equity world, it's about efficiency and doing more with less or more with the same.

(35:56):

And we're always looking for efficiencies in everything we do from marketing to operations. So it's about being able to make those quick decisions and those quick sprints and break it down into easily digestible report outs of like, "Hey, this worked. This is what our plan was for success and we hit it, great, we're going to scale it. " And we need a very like bulletproof report out to get incremental dollars to scale something. So it makes us much more intentional around asking for more dollars and really getting honed in on what those success metrics look like.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (36:50):

Ben, I see you ready to jump in. I can jump

Ben Galvin (36:51):

On that as well. It's really fascinating because I think when you think of all of the data models, a lot of it's a little bit spilled milk. We just have to continue to evolve from almost like retrospective validation to forward looking enablement. It's not enough anymore to explain any like past performance. We need to inform strategic allocation. That way we can accelerate decision making or even align with enterprise growth objectives because we know those change from time to time. I know in my own experience, unifying success across channels or retailers is really hard to do, whether it's like in- store lift or e-commerce conversion, but I think it's really important that as we think about catching up to the speed of retail media and e-commerce in all instances like that measurement component, whatever those metrics are, are so important because you're now ingesting real-time retail media signals or retail media data, you're ingesting a digital shelf dynamics like share of search and how do you then integrate any type of shopper behavior or audience testing that you didn't in the past?

(38:01):

I just feel like if you think about sales performance tracking 10 years ago, a lot of it was sales performance related and now you can tie other areas of investment or budget against the same, call it sales performance to get and derive where that actual purchase happened, but more importantly, where that impression happened that drove that purchase.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (38:26):

And it's like we planned this because Ben, that's a perfect transition into the next question, which is what we talked about where some M&Ms don't even have retail media or the digital shelf or any digital commerce metrics inside of them, right? So it's not really giving you that real time data. So kind of to double click on the point you just made, Ben, how are you thinking about making these changes or how are you working with your agency to incorporate some of these things? What are the actions you're kind of taking to make sure that your MMM is including all of these aspects?

Ben Galvin (38:57):

Well, and I think it goes beyond just the MMM. I think any, especially CPG grocery brand needs to change their approach to stay relevant in all of these specific worlds that we talk about, not necessarily to be like slow and static, but that fast and flexible. And again, I realize we in the grocery CPG world are very dependent on how quick the retailers can move because we sell through them, but I believe there's just a lot of models out there that are still thinking that linear TV or billboard drive sales without actually checking, call it the dotcom experience of our retailers or if you have a DTC environment. And so I think what needs to change is that fast and flexibility and the component of, again, and I mentioned it earlier on the call, utilizing the external data more, weighting it more heavily, knowing that kind of not every company's going to be a subject matter expert.

(39:52):

So changing your model, again, whether it's an MMM or it's just your retail media model to understand that the signals are out there. So making sure that it is as fast as flexible as possible. So if you put a calendar together in December for all of next year, you can make those changes in Q2 based on signals you see in early Q1. That is just harder to do in an in- store environment because of the return on data that you don't see in time, but structurally, I feel like teams, and we have a really great shopper marketing and digital media team here at Monster, we just have to be more flexible to make those adjustments, whether it's campaign structure or it's activation to then reflect whatever the in- store component is because that kind of pivot point at the influx of, call it digital commerce and digital discoverability is going to continue to merge when it comes to how users not only discover products, but the ease in which they want to then check out.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (40:52):

Ash, any thoughts on that one?

Ash McMullen (40:56):

Yeah. I mean, I hate to say more, I don't want to say more data because we have a lot of data, but equaling the playing field of the amount of data that we are able to get from the different retailers, like our traditional path was we leaned further into Amazon because we had all the data easily accessible from Amazon, which yeah, that makes sense. And then we challenged ourselves to make this big shift to social first. And I was like, "What is that going to do? " So it's like pulling in your different points of purchase from like, we want more data that we can get from Walmart and Target and other physical shelf channels and pull all of this in and put those variables into this model where we can see more representation from like the real customer journey because they may purchase the first time at a physical shelf and then repeat on the digital shelf.

(42:10):

So it's about kind of understanding and really setting those success milestones aside from the MMM. Like, okay, we're going to make these decisions and build out our plan based on what this, the data that we're seeing, but then we're going to also predict what we expect to see. And if we're not seeing that, use those as the sensitivity levels of whether or not we need to make a shift and AI driven marketing, embracing like just everything is going to be different tomorrow every single day is just part of this and not being afraid of it. You just embrace it and stuff's going to happen and the quicker you can just like jump to it and figure it out and get your task force together to Ben's point of like, it is going to take more than one team or one person and that team may look different every time, but embrace it and learn it and figure out your next move without freezing in place.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (43:23):

And I think that's where the iterative planning really comes into play. Whether we're talking about MMMs, whether we're talking about e-commerce, whether we're talking about agentic commerce, in general, iterative planning needs to change like most organizations plan for a year and that's just not the way that our industry operates. So if you take away one thing, go talk to your finance teams, go talk to your marketing, IT, sales teams, and think about how you can be more flexible in your planning, it is a really critical piece of success.

Ash McMullen (43:52):

Without making your agency crazy, because you do want to be on the favorites list.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (43:59):

Also that, great point.

Ash McMullen (44:01):

It's my agency side. I have to always advocate for the agency side. It'll always be a part of me.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (44:10):

Okay. So some other really great nuggets to take away. So for Ash Ben, if there are a couple things you want the leaders on the call to take away, what can they do? Some easy things to really kind of improve their overall measurement approach or things maybe you've tried and have worked really well, that would be a good takeaway. Ben, maybe I'll pick on you first.

Ben Galvin (44:30):

Yeah. Happy to start. I think in all leaders on this call, it's important to understand like who are those champions within your organization at all levels. This is not a, I need to get all the vice presidents on board. This is a, what is my unified view of success across the channels or departments of my business? I think that's a big component. You don't need all the departments on board. You just need, again, that core set that you feel like will have that input, but most importantly, do the rigor. And then I think as you continue to think about being able to align on what success looks like, it's then aligning on the metrics or the measurement components that you as an organization want to look at. Again, in- store lift, omnichannel lift, e-commerce conversion, total basket growth. Again, it's going to be different for all different companies.

(45:22):

And then as you then take a step back and again, have that task force, it's so important to make sure that by improving that measurement approach, which I think we're all trying to do, you want to ensure that you're then evaluating that retail media spend. Is it constantly and consistently tagged, linked to online and in- store sales where you can? And then even taking small steps to sync up promotional calendars across retailers, if you can, packages, brands, and then standardizing. I know on the digital shelf side, we work very closely to make sure that you're standardizing product taxonomy or keywords to then improve that measurement clarity. Those are, again, among a number of things, but it's so important to almost forget about the small things. And when you think about the whole idea of improving measurement approach, it sometimes comes down to, do we have our homework done first so we can then structurally make sure that the output that we get from this is exactly what we're looking for.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (46:29):

I love that. Great advice. Ash, how about from you?

Ash McMullen (46:33):

So I'm going to come back to where I was in the beginning of defining that question you are trying to answer and getting the starting your alignment journey of we all want to answer this question. The second piece is like doing the research ahead of time. Not every MMM company is going to be the right fit. They are all different. And it's about truly understanding looking at your business, the question you're trying to answer, and then how you're set up resourcing wise, whether it's internal and agency, and then finding the right company that fits for that that's going to have the quickest, most seamless onboarding, which I know that's another thing, like a magic dashboard, but there's putting all of those pieces and also not being afraid of recommending taking a big bet and taking a risk because again, not an easy year, but we're also not going to get to the next step and get through it without taking a big calculated risk.

(47:48):

You have to look at your opportunities of where do I place my big bets and this can be a part of that.

Lauren Livak Gilbert (47:58):

I love that. Fantastic advice from both Ben and Ash. So I want to just pull up the report QR code again. The link is also in the chat. I really encourage everyone to read through it if you have not. If you do have any questions, we will give everyone a chance to add them to the Q&A module. I don't see any. I know we had some in the chat that we got to, but really appreciate everyone coming on today, listening. Thank you. A huge thank you to Ash and Ben for being a part of this, sharing all of their insights and for Donna being a great partner on this research report. We hope that it helps you. We hope you have some takeaways that you can bring back to your organization. This webinar has been recorded. You will receive the recording in your email. So if you want to watch it again, you want to share with anyone, and there will also be the link to the report if you missed it.

(48:52):

So Ash, Ben, Donna, thank you all so much for being here today.

Donna Sharp (48:56):

Thanks

Ash McMullen (48:56):

For having me.

Donna Sharp (48:57):

You, Lauren, and the DSI community. All

Lauren Livak Gilbert (49:00):

Right. Thanks everyone.

Peter Crosby (49:02):

Thanks to all our guests and to MediaLink for partnering on this research, which you can find in the resources section on the DSI website. Speaking of resources, there is so much more knowledge coming at you in April at the Digital Shelf Summit, all the details at digitalshelfsummit.com. Thanks for being part of our community.