Analytics Partners followed by Ipsos MMA have led the way in Gartner's inaugural Magic Quadrant for Marketing Mix Modelling Solutions (MMS), scoring the highest marks to become both leaders and visionaries in the field.

Gartner defines MMM solutions as services and software that help chief marketing officers (CMOs) plan future spend and measure past investment performance. It identified three key use cases to base its scoring on: Demonstrating marketing's value by quantifying performance while accounting for external factors; enhancing current marketing performance by optimising existing media; and improving long-term marketing performance by evaluating multiple scenarios for marketing budgets and external factors.

According to the 2024 Gartner Marketing Analytics and Technology Survey, 64 per cent of senior marketing leaders have adopted MMM solutions. The analyst firm found B2C marketing leaders who reported MMM utilisation were twice as likely to be able to prove value and receive credit than leaders who said they did not use MMM.

To make the Gartner MMS list, vendors needed to have marketing data acquisition and normalisation via API from the most popular sources, such as digital media, offline advertising and sales history, on-demand of predictive models from data inputs and presentation of these models to marketers. They also needed to have flexible scenario planning, monthly or quarterly refreshes of predictive models using automated fine-tuning, media optimisation and interactive reporting.

Analytic Partners was singled out as a leader for breadth of approach, robust software platform and advanced analytics capabilities.

"Analytic Partners' operations are geographically diversified and its clients tend to be large and midsize enterprises across a variety of industries. Its strategic roadmap includes plans to introduce expanded insights based on loyalty and spend data, as well as to improve the granularity of its forecasting based on predicted macroeconomic and weather factors," the report authors stated. The cautions were limited private cloud support, a higher price tag and model latency.

Ipsos MMA was the second-higher performer in the 10-strong pack for its Activate product, and Gartner noted enterprise-wide c-suite buy-in, a highly engaged customer experience model and support for large advertising budgets as strengths.

"Ipsos MMA's strategic roadmap focuses on continuing to build an end-to-end data hub, measurement platform and activation engine with feedback loops. The aim is to enable clients to quickly connect insights across a broad array of marketing research, analytic, media, operational and other data," the report stated.

The caution was Ipsos MMA has limited support for smaller advertising budgets of less than $25 million, premium pricing and limited in-platform support for complex analytics.

The other vendors to make it into the top right quadrant as leaders and visionaries with slightly less ability to execute were OptiMine and TransUnion.

The only vendor in the visionaries category but lacking the ability to execute at the level of the top four was Ekimetrics. Ekimetrics' One.Vision product provides a modular approach to MMM that offers clients a customisable mix of capabilities but it's primarily located in EMEA, and tend to be in the consumer packaged goods (CPG), retail, financial and automotive sectors. Low utilisation outside of marketing was another caution from Gartner.

Challengers and niche players with less ability to execute in order were Circana, Nielsen, Kantar, Keen Decision Systems and further down the spectrum, Fractal Analytics.

"Traditional capabilities, such as marginal returns calculations [accounting for external drivers, like macroeconomic factors and competitive activity] are increasingly table stakes and provide limited opportunity for differentiation," Gartner authors commented.

"As a result, buyers use indicators of proprietary signals that enhance commodified driver analysis, support for relevant engagement models (self-service, high-touch or hybrid approach) and breadth of engagement across enterprise functions. Buyers also consider a vendor's viability, current performance and whether that performance is likely to continue."

Gartner noted four main trends now shaping the MMM space. The first is the noise of a surge of new entrants, while the second is the rise of hybrid MMS solutions combining software and humans, providing better speed to action. Consulting and engagement services are also increasing MMM adoption thanks to efforts by vendors to build change management programs. Yet opaque pricing models remain a major problem.

"Many vendors offer a single, enterprise-wide license for their platforms, which has the potential to contain costs for complex use cases, such as multibrand or multiagency situations. Confront pricing opacity by requesting proof of concept engagements, customer references and building a business case in advance of full licensing," Gartner advised.

To be included in the list, vendors have to have at least 10 paying clients for MMM solutions in 2021, 2022 and 2023, and received at least 55 per cent of revenue from clients located in North America and/or Europe. Revenue also needs to be upwards of US$20 million or at least US$10 million with a significant number of new customer logos on the books in the last 12 months.