The news: Marketers are demanding real-time insights over postmortems, said Michael Della Penna, chief strategy officer at InMarket. Speaking with EMARKETER, he noted growing pressure to prove ROI across fragmented channels. “Measurement has become center stage,” he said, as brands push for faster, clearer ties between ad spend and incremental sales.

The shift centers on the merger of marketing mix modeling (MMM) and multi-touch attribution (MTA)—two historically separate tools now converging to deliver a unified, real-time view of performance. Traditionally, MMM looked backward at aggregate results, while MTA focused on individual campaigns. Now, by fusing the two, marketers can identify what’s driving sales and reallocate spend mid-flight rather than waiting months for reports.

Why it matters: “Real-time scenario planning”—testing outcomes, modeling forecasts, and adjusting creative or budgets in days instead of quarters—has become a leading advertiser demand, reshaping investment priorities across the industry.

• 56% of US marketers rank sales lift as their top measurement goal, underscoring the pivot toward outcomes-based decision-making.
• Nearly half (48%) now view MMM as essential, validating Della Penna’s call for blending MMM and MTA to achieve faster, more comprehensive insights.
• 46.9% plan to increase investment in MMM this year, while 36.2% are funding incrementality testing to refine predictive models and optimize spend in real time.

Yes, but: At the same time, only 27% of marketers say they intend to adopt unified measurement platforms—a gap InMarket aims to close through its end-to-end ecosystem connecting planning, activation, and attribution. “Marketers don’t want a dozen dashboards,” Della Penna said. “They want one version of the truth that links awareness to conversion.”

AI is accelerating that shift. According to Della Penna, machine learning now allows marketers to identify which publisher, offer, or creative is driving incremental lift—and automatically reallocate budgets mid-campaign. That capability is redefining MMM’s reputation: Once seen as backward-looking, it’s now considered the most reliable methodology by 28% of marketers, far outpacing MTA at 19%.

What marketers should do: Della Penna’s argument reflects a broader truth that measurement has become a competitive advantage. In an era of tighter budgets and fragmented audiences, the winners will be those who close the loop between analytics and activation.

InMarket’s integration of transactional, intent, and location data positions it to deliver on that promise—helping marketers not just measure what happened, but predict what consumers will buy next. The convergence of MMM and MTA isn’t about dashboards—it’s about decision speed, consistency, and accountability. And as Della Penna put it, the future of marketing measurement “isn’t just reporting—it’s responsiveness.”