Peter Grafe
Feb 3, 2026
The Hard Truth About MMM and Incrementality
MMM and incrementality testing can't tell you what to do next. Learn why measurement without orchestration leaves money on the table.
Marketing Mix Modeling
Incrementality
Why Measurement Alone Will Never Fix Marketing and What Comes Next
Marketing measurement is more advanced than ever, and yet for most teams, decision making feels slower, more fragmented, and less reliable. That is because today’s measurement tools can tell you what happened, but they cannot tell you what to do next.
Two methodologies dominate the modern measurement stack:
Both are powerful and necessary. But on their own, neither is sufficient to unlock continuous, context aware decision making.
This article explains why MMM and incrementality only get you halfway there, and why the next evolution is an agentic orchestration layer that unifies both with real time data and business context.
Why MMM Is Powerful and Fundamentally Constrained
Marketing Mix Modeling is experiencing a resurgence because it offers a holistic, strategic view of how marketing drives business outcomes. It uses aggregated data, not user level identifiers, to estimate how channels and other business drivers contribute to sales, revenue, or conversions.
What MMM Does Well
Accounts for all channels and drivers, including offline spend, promotions, seasonality, and macro effects
Produces directional ROI estimates that reflect real economic impact rather than platform reported conversions
Is privacy safe by design and independent of cookies or user tracking
Today, roughly 60 percent of large US advertisers use MMM in some form to guide strategic budget allocation.
Where MMM Breaks Down
MMM lacks granularity by design
MMM operates on aggregated time series data. You will never get user level, ad level, or campaign level truth out of it. That means you know which channels matter, but not which tactics inside them. You cannot translate MMM outputs directly into day to day platform actions.
MMM moves slower than marketing platforms
Even modern automated MMMs that refresh weekly are still lagging indicators. Platforms change daily. Auctions shift hourly. Consumer behavior can turn in days. MMM will always validate decisions after the fact, not guide them in the moment.
MMM explains the past, not the next move
MMM answers the question:
Given everything that happened, what drove impact?
It does not answer:
Given what is happening right now, what should I do next?
That gap matters more than most teams admit.
Incrementality Testing: Causal Truth with Narrow Scope
Incrementality testing is one of the most causally sound ways to measure marketing impact. By comparing exposed and unexposed groups, it isolates the true incremental effect of a campaign or tactic.
Where Incrementality Shines
Cuts through platform bias and over attribution
Validates specific hypotheses with high confidence
Where Incrementality Falls Short
It's slow by necessity
Well designed incrementality experiments typically require 4 to 8 weeks to reach statistical significance. During that time, the tested campaigns must remain largely unchanged. That makes incrementality unsuitable as a real time decision engine.
You can only test a fraction of your system
Incrementality is inherently narrow. Each test isolates a single lever. Even mature marketing organizations typically run around 20 or more incrementality tests per year. That is nowhere near enough to continuously guide all channels, audiences, creatives, and budget decisions.
It validates impact but does not orchestrate decisions
Incrementality tells you whether a change caused lift. It does not tell you how to rebalance the rest of the system once that insight exists.
Hard Data Points That Matter
A few industry signals help ground this discussion:
Around 60 percent of large US advertisers use MMM to guide strategic marketing allocation
Incrementality tests usually take 4 to 8 weeks to reach statistical validity
Even advanced teams typically run around 20 incrementality tests per year
The implication is simple. Measurement tools operate at a very different speed and scope than marketing decisions need to.
Measurement Alone Does Not Drive Better Decisions
Here is the uncomfortable truth.
Having an MMM provider or an incrementality provider does not mean you are making better marketing decisions. It means you are better informed after the fact.
Most teams still lack a system that connects:
Slow but statistically strong signals from MMM
Narrow but causal insights from incrementality
Fast and noisy signals from platforms like Google and Meta
Business context such as goals, constraints, risk tolerance, and channel beliefs
Without that connective layer, measurement remains passive.
A Concrete Example: When Demand Surges, Measurement Lags
Imagine a consumer brand sees a sudden spike in organic demand.
Brand search volume jumps
Direct traffic increases
Social mentions accelerate
What Happens Today
MMM will not reflect this until the next refresh. Incrementality is not running on this specific moment. The team hesitates or reacts based on gut feel or platform dashboards.
What Should Happen Instead
An orchestration layer detects:
Real time platform signals such as search demand and auction pressure
Historical learnings from MMM
The company’s stated objectives, for example efficient growth versus aggressive capture
The system recommends temporarily shifting budget from Meta prospecting into branded and high intent search to harvest existing demand while monitoring marginal returns.
A week later, MMM updates and validates whether that decision improved overall ROI. That learning feeds back into future recommendations.
This is the loop measurement alone cannot close.
Why MMM Still Matters in an Orchestrated System
If decisions are happening faster, why keep MMM?
Because MMM provides:
Long term validation
Structural understanding of channel effects
A stable baseline against short term noise
MMM becomes the memory of the system. Incrementality becomes the truth check. Platform data provides speed. Orchestration turns all of it into decisions.
The Future: Agentic Marketing Orchestration
The next evolution is not another dashboard or another static model.
It is an agentic orchestration layer that:
Ingests MMM and incrementality outputs as signals, not verdicts
Combines them with real time platform data
Applies business goals, constraints, and strategic preferences
Makes recommendations while learning from outcomes
This is not about replacing human judgment. It is about augmenting it at the speed marketing actually operates.
Close the Loop or Leave Value on the Table
Measurement is necessary, but it is not sufficient.
MMM and incrementality are foundational. Without an orchestration layer on top, they will always leave value on the table.
The teams that win next will not be the ones with the best models. They will be the ones that turn measurement into continuous, context aware decisions.