Dial M for murky

Sep 22, 2025

Welcome to a Monday edition of Unmade to kick off the week.

Today: Media mix modelling seems to have come of age by becoming a target for the platforms to fudge.

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Which media mix modelling services ‘fudge the numbers’?

On Friday afternoon, I noticed there was something I hadn’t been admitting to myself about media mix modelling.

On the plane home to Tasmania from Sydney, I opened my iPad to read the IAB’s new report on MMM and discovered I’d messed up the download. Saving stuff to my iCloud meant it wasn’t available up in the actual clouds.

It was only when I realised how delighted this made me, that I recognised how much I’ve been treating MMM as one of those necessary evils. Slightly dull but important. And an enormous relief when fate intervenes and I can’t read about it. On the flight at least. Never has watching an episode of Fargo felt like a guiltier pleasure.

Nonetheless, MMM has hit a moment where it’s in the marketing zeitgeist. Not having a point of view about media mix modelling would be like answering “I don’t know” to the question of who’d win a pub brawl: Byron Sharp or Gary Vee.

‘Intellectual surrender‘ - Jordan Taylor-Bartels

Two posts over the weekend summed up where we’re at in the MMM cycle. Jordan Taylor-Bartels, founder of the relatively newly arrived Prophet, took to Substack to pick a non-pub fight with Byron Sharp.

Decision Science

Marketing Science: Why the Industry's Anti-Science Bias Is Costing Us Everything

Marketing Science: Why the Industry's Anti-Science Bias Is Costing Us Everything…

a month ago · 1 like · 2 comments · Jordan Taylor-Bartels

JTB took issue with Sharp’s contention that MMMs were causing confusion, and it was better to measure less. According to Taylor-Bartels: “This is intellectual surrender dressed up as academic wisdom.”

Just as much as having an IAB sector report, this is the sort of discussion which signals that MMM is reaching critical mass. You only have this kind of debate when it’s beginning to matter.

And almost the next LinkedIn post in my feed summed up the other side of MMM. Brenden Delarua, the US-based CMO of media mix modelling platform Stella, made a provocative claim: “Had a shocking conversation recently with an ex-exec from a large MMM platform: Guy worked there for years, ran MMM clients directly. Now he's at a new company and won't touch his former company's tool. His exact words: ‘They have contracts with Google and Meta to fudge the numbers and make Google and Meta look better in the MMM’.”

While Delarua went on to emphasise that he was repeating the claim, but did not know if it was true, it would be a development that would tie into where MMM is in the cycle. Given their propensity for marking their own homework, what would be stranger would be if the platforms had not found a way to incentivise the MMM platforms they do business with to make them look as good as possible.

There was a further clue in the comment thread from Henry Innis, co-founder of Mutinex (which was not the MMM being accused). Innis wrote:

“Not exactly how it works from my experience. Also not far off
“1) Co-funding arrangements are part of customer JBP [joint business planning] or direct to vendor
“2) Direct to vendor (often marked as partnerships) can mean results are jointly review before sending to Customer
“3) Partnership programs will most likely favour volume of funding towards those who produce results most aligned to the partnership
“Broadly: we need to reduce partnership programs and the concept of free measurement.”

In other words, the platforms have created “partnership programs” that some MMM suppliers, presumably including some of the holdcos, use as another revenue stream. And such agency partners (or others) would need to run their results by the platforms before they share them with their own client. Curious, huh?

‘We need to reduce partnership programs’ - Henry Innis

Rather like principal media, marketers need to ask specific questions of their agencies and other measurement suppliers about whether they have conflicts of interest.

With Australia a little behind the US on MMM, there’s a chance that these conflicts of interest are not yet in this market. Marketers asking the right questions now could help avoid it.

We’ll return to this topic. If anyone who’s seen such agreements can tell me more, I’d love to chat off the record - tim@unmade.media.

SCA back above $200m again

Southern Cross Austereo nudged back above a $200m market capitalisation today with the share price moving up by 3.1%

It was otherwise a remarkably quiet day on the Unmade Index. Ive Group was the only other stock to move up, rising by 0.4%.

Moving in the other direction, Vinyl Group lost 3.2% to land on a market cap of $128m while Ooh Media lost 0.5%. Among the smaller stocks, Pureprofile lost 2.3% and Motio lost 3.5%.

The Unmade Index closed on 475.3 points, up 2.8 points for the day.