Advertisers are demanding greater accountability. They are looking for data points that help to reduce risk and maximize the sales return on their marketing investments. For many, the data points they look toward are contained in marketing mix modeling results. Specifically, what is the sales contribution of each investment (e.g. spending in TV, radio, couponing, etc.) and what is the corresponding sales return on investment? Building marketing models requires assembling a historical database of key performance indicators (KPIs like sales, gross margin, etc.) and a complete set of factors believed to influence the selected KPIs. Under-Measurement of Impacts There is a history of marketing mix models understating the contribution of media channels that have been incorrectly expressed within the models. The result has been a distorted view of sales contributions, ROIs and optimal cross channel media budget allocations. These allocations have tended to favor television. Analysts charged with quantifying impact for each sales driver have been frustrated by the difficulty of isolating display and online video impacts. Modeling these media may benefit from recent investigations into how best to express media activities within the model development process. Industry Investigation In recent years, industry stakeholders for the magazine and radio fields have separately initiated investigations of the under-measurement problem for their respective media. The results of these investigations have been both extensive and beneficial. In both cases, improved ad exposure measures (inputs to the models) were developed and implemented. Measured sales contributions and ROI estimates increased. Contributions were found to shift toward the historically under-measured channels. The Magazine Industry Inquiry The magazine industry initiative was spearheaded by the Magazine Publishers Association with the involvement of GfK MRI and several well-established modeling consultancies. Examples of findings include: 1. More specific media inputs yielded a better match to marketing outcomes suggesting the use of weekly data based on issue-specific measurement (to capture audience accumulation) at a market-level. 2. GRPs (rather than spending data) are a truer measure of ad exposure. Target audience GRPs should be preferred over more broadly defined GRPs, e.g. based on all adults or households. These suggested practices, which were tested by the modelers, resulted in increases in magazine sales contribution. The contributions and ROIs of other media channels decreased proportionately with the improvement in magazine performance. Performance improved at above threshold exposure levels. The Radio Industry Inquiry The radio industry initiative was spearheaded by Arbitron, the Westwood One and Premiere Radio Networks. Up to this point, modelers reported using a variety of data types, including expenditures, and planned rather than actualized weight levels. Target rating points were not the standard. Arbitron radio diary data (reported as a 3-month moving average) was being used to feed the models. Arbitron had recently introduced the PPM (Portable People Meter). It provided a continuous (passively measured) stream of radio listenership. Integrating PPM data with commercial occurrence data from Media Monitors produced a more exact measure of ad exposure. Examples of findings include: