How A Large Retailer Avoided the Brand vs. Performance Optimization Trap
How we implemented a strategic split in optimization to prevent a single-metric model from cannibalizing long-term brand investment for short-term sales gains.
The Story
Standard MMM optimization maximizes a single KPI (usually sales) which systematically shifts budget away from upper funnel brand campaigns into lower funnel performance, simply because the model sees a faster return.
With executive-level brand awareness and consideration targets, a single-metric optimization would have cannibalized long-term brand investment to chase short-term sales gains.
We implemented a strategic split in the optimization: the brand budget was defined first, based on the executive team’s awareness and consideration targets and the model then estimated the spend required to reach them.
The remaining budget was separately allocated to performance and optimized against sales KPIs. Where multiple objectives needed to be balanced simultaneously, a weighted optimization was applied across KPIs, ensuring both long-term brand metrics and short-term revenue were appropriately accounted for.
Our Impact
Brand integrity preserved
Brand and performance budgets optimized separately, preserving the integrity of the client’s media strategy
Full objective coverage
Recommendations reflected the full set of media objectives, not just short-term sales
Board-level alignment
Prevented the model from cannibalizing brand investment to chase performance returns, aligning optimization outputs to both board-level brand targets and commercial goals
How We Solved This Large Retailer’s Problem
Problem
Standard MMM optimization maximizes a single KPI (usually sales) which systematically shifts budget away from upper funnel brand campaigns into lower funnel performance, simply because the model sees a faster return. With executive-level brand awareness and consideration targets, a single-metric optimization would have cannibalized long-term brand investment to chase short-term sales gains.
Solution
We implemented a strategic split in the optimization: the brand budget was defined first, based on the executive team’s awareness and consideration targets and the model then estimated the spend required to reach them. The remaining budget was separately allocated to performance and optimized against sales KPIs. Where multiple objectives needed to be balanced simultaneously, a weighted optimization was applied across KPIs, ensuring both long-term brand metrics and short-term revenue were appropriately accounted for.
Core approach: strategic split in optimization + brand budget defined first based on awareness and consideration targets + remaining budget allocated to performance and optimized against sales KPIs + weighted optimization applied across KPIs where multiple objectives needed to be balanced simultaneously.
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