• by Gavin O'Malley , Staff Writer @mp_gavin, September 27, 2016

On the topic of attribution, marketing mix modeling didn’t get much love from the pros at OMMA Programmatic, on Tuesday.

“For traditional marketers, you might be temped to try to measure programmatic with media mix modeling [but] this is not TV,” said Tyler Pietz, VP of Programmatic Strategy at Cadreon. 

Among other issues, “Media mix modeling is incredibly complex,” said Nick Cavet, Associate Partner and Director of Digital Strategy at VSA Partners. “There’s all these anomalies that occur in the market place that have to be accounted for.”

Andrew Arthur, SVP and Product Lead on Data Partnerships at, GfK MRI, took issue with modeling in general.

“There are models based on models based on models,” Arthur said. In the end, it’s static [and] you can’t profile audience segments in a holistic sense.”

As an alternative, Arthur suggested a “matchback” approach, which allows buyers to actually see sales occur in retail channels.

Added Arthur: “It’s particularly attractive because it doesn’t involve modeling.”