• by Laurie Sullivan , Yesterday

Prescient AI conducted research that led it to develop and launch new marketing mix models (MMMs) intended to fix the problem of overspending on budgets and misattribution in traditional models.

Legacy MMMs overspend by as much as 81% during holidays like Black Friday, according to the data. These and other failures are often attributed to data limitations or optimization choices.

In an analysis of 25 retail brands conducted by Prescient AI in February 2026, retail accounted for more than half of total revenue on average, yet standard MMM tools are built to measure website conversions only.

The findings suggest that marketing teams optimize budgets and build forecasts based on half of the business they run at most. That is not enough.

"For brands with retail distribution, measuring only what happens on websites is no longer good enough," Mike True, CEO, Prescient AI, said.

The National Retail Federation today forecast that retail sales in 2026 will rise 4.4% to $5.6 trillion compared with the prior year. The data is based on a new forecast approach developed in partnership with Oxford Economics, an independent economic advisory firms. 

In Prescient AI’s research also released Wednesday, the company argues the MMM used by most “conflicts with actual marketing system dynamics. This leads to non-identifiability under realistic marketing conditions.”

Prescient AI engineers built “OMEN,” a new MMM tool meant to help brands spend their marketing budget more effectively, and “Multi-Retail Connectors” designed for omnichannel brands spending $80,000 or more per month on paid media across three or more channels. It’s recommended for multichannel retailers with active distribution across at least two retail partners.

Brands selling through Target, Walmart, Ulta, Sephora, and other major retailers now can see, at the individual retailer level, how their paid media drives in-store sales, measure retail halo effects, and make budget decisions based on their full revenue picture.

From the findings, Prescient AI also created a new MMM framework, “Omen,” that models marketing as an interconnected system. The company said it can reduce wasted ad spend from up to 45% to 5.6%. 

DemandScience’s "2026 State of Performance Marketing Report” explains how metrics fail to translate into revenue, and that two-thirds of marketers often find their campaign dashboards show success that doesn't turn into revenue outcomes.