What you need to know:

• After Dentsu Media struck the first holding company partnership with Mutinex in April, Atomic 212 is the first indie to align with the AI-based econometrics and market mix (MMM) modelling firm. 
• Upwards of 40 blue chip Australian brands have signed directly with the SaaS platform.
• Finance teams accept the methodology and modelling which identifies the media channels and marketing activity contributing most to business results like sales.
• Agency groups, like the big consulting firms, have built econometrics teams but they're typically slower, manual and expensive.
• Atomic 212's CEO Claire Fenner says in-house agency offers are at risk of being "tweaked and adjusted" to suit their media investment agendas.
• Mutinex CEO Henry Innis claims the advancement of AI into MMM will marginalise the developments in cross-media measurement.             

$1.5bn spend pool

AI-powered market mix modelling platform Mutinex has signed-up Atomic 212 as the first independent agency to join its “Partnership Program”, a few months after Dentsu Media sealed the first agency partnership deal.

The SaaS platform has been adopted by dozens of blue chip marketing teams directly but the "partnership program" allows Atomic’s clients to tap Mutinex’s AI tech – strictly on an ‘opt-in’ basis – to link their media and marketing metrics with business KPIs, such as how a campaign delivers sales uplift and ROI and which channels worked best.

Mutinex uses aggregate ROI data on a media spending pool of $1.5bn in Australia that is derived from the Mutinex GrowthOS’ current client base – banks, insurers and consumer goods firms are those in the media spend pool. Atomic 212 can overlay this data with its own category and sector level inputs to provide richer insights about campaign and business performance.

Although Atomic has its own suite of market mix modelling tools, the benefit of tying the knot with Mutinex is that it is independent and runs as a SaaS platform providing real time econometric analysis; other conventional market mix modelling offerings can take months from campaign launch to generate results.

Kicking ‘agendas’ into touch

Atomic 212 National Chief Executive Claire Fenner told Mi3 the Mutinex partnership would “allow our clients to have 100 per cent trust that there's no [agency] agenda in the mix market modelling output – that's certainly not our objective, but we want to make sure that we have really robust insights to inform the planning that we're delivering for our clients. 

“There is absolutely a risk that agencies could adjust a model to suit their preferred outcomes," she said. "That's a limitation of modelling, especially when it's done manually because it can be tweaked and adjusted, and there is always a human element in it when it isn't an independent platform that's delivering the insights."

Fenner said the Mutinex alliance would neutralise any concerns among clients that "we're not marking our own homework and that the insights are completely valid for their business.”

Another benefit of market mix modelling and econometrics is that it is currently one of very few ways to accurately measure cross-channel performance of a campaign, assessing how different media channels shift the dial on business performance. Media metrics have historically been used as a proxy signal for business impact but typically seen as too rubbery by finance teams.   

Fenner believes this makes it an invaluable tool for planning and tweaking campaigns in real-time, but said it is one of many data sets agencies use, including media metrics.

A new way to plan media?

When Dentsu Media inked a deal in April to become the first Mutinex agency partner, chief executive Danny Bass said he expected the partnership to force a more agile approach to media planning and budget allocations – an issue he argued industry has been too slow to adapt to. This could provide a more accurate and contrarian picture about the business impact of media audience and viewing shifts and budget reallocation. 

Bass suggested, for instance, that material declines in free-to-air TV audiences still may not impact on how that channel delivers on key business metrics, arguing that any media channel's value is not necessarily pegged to the volume of eyeballs it attracts.

It begs the question as to whether industry is wasting its time battling over a cross-media measurement ‘panacea’.

Is cross media measurement still relevant?

“No,” per Mutinex co-founder and CEO Henry Innis. Although unsurprising given the global growth ambitions of Mutinex, the rationale is worth considering.

“Most companies are not looking for media metrics to justify marketing investment, but they're looking for whether this influences their profit and loss and other business metrics,” he said. “I don't think brands need cross-media measurement to be absolutely nailed if they have a way to make confident cross-media decisions based on business outcomes rather than media metrics.”

Another advantage of econometrics, argues Innis, is that it arms marketers with C-suite-level evidence about how their activity drives business performance. This can be useful in protecting budgets during lean economic times if it turns out "marketing is protecting the business against external contractions”.

US mutiny ‘on track’

Both Dentsu and Atomic have undisclosed exclusivity periods baked into their GrowthOS deals – but the platform started first by directly signing up blue chip Australian brands.

The business has already expanded to the US, where operations are being led by former Starcom and IPG exec John Sintras with the fledgling North American unit looking to hire half a dozen more staff in coming months. 

Innis told Mi3 Mutinex was gaining traction in the US and that he expects “three to four” new clients in the near future.

“The scale of that market is bigger and probably works better for our business," he said. "We find it easier to get mid-market client interest as ad spend is larger and the platform return is easier to extract. We also have interest from major retailers and media companies. I would expect some sizeable customer announcements there soon based on our pipeline."

Note from the Editors: Atomic and Mutinex are Mi3 commercial partners. Atomic 212 CEO Claire Fenner and Mutinex CEO Henry Innis give their views on the new alliance this week in a sponsored Market Voice piece here. This story is Mi3's take.