Overview

Prescient harnesses Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) to turn your raw marketing data into actionable, long-term insights. In this article, you’ll discover the foundational ideas behind Prescient, see who benefits from it, and learn whether it’s the right fit for your organization.

In this article, you’ll learn:

How Prescient’s MMM approach supports different roles (CEO, CFO, Marketer).
When Prescient is the right fit—and when it isn’t.
The fundamental building blocks of what Prescient measures.
What you can expect to accomplish with Prescient.
Key concepts like Base Revenue, Halo Effects, ROAS, CAC, and more.

For deeper feature details—such as how to visualize performance metrics or forecast campaign results—check out our dedicated articles on Performance Measurement, Modeled Attribution, and Halo Effects.

What is an MMM?

Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) is a statistical approach to understanding how different marketing efforts drive incremental revenue and growth over time. Unlike single-touch or digital-fingerprint-based methods, MMM takes a broader, long-term perspective—accounting for factors like seasonality, halo effects, and delayed conversions. For a deeper dive into the specific modeling techniques and methodology, refer to the Methodologies article.

How Prescient Helps Your Organization

Prescient offers a tailored experience for every role in your organization, helping you achieve your unique goals with data-driven insights:

CEO: Long-Term Growth & Alignment

Focus on aligning marketing investment with long-term business growth. Prescient empowers you to:

Measure ROI More Holistically: Understand which campaigns and channels contribute most to long-term revenue—even if results are delayed.
Steer Strategic Decisions: Balance immediate returns with sustainable growth by analyzing how spend influences revenue over time.
Forecast Outcomes: Use predictive modeling to estimate the effect of launching new campaigns or shifting budget allocations before committing resources.

CFO: Spend Efficiency & Profitability

Gain clarity on marketing spend efficiency to ensure every dollar contributes to improving profitability. With Prescient, you can:

Link Spend to Key Metrics: Monitor how spend changes affect Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Return on Ad Spend (ROAS).
Forecast Profitability: Prescient separates base revenue from halo effects to reveal which campaigns truly drive incremental revenue.
Evaluate Trade-Offs: Identify tension points between CAC and revenue growth so you can ensure sustainable profitability.

As a Marketer:

Optimize campaign performance by identifying high-ROI channels and tactics. Prescient enables you to:

Channel-Level Insights: See how channels like Meta, Google, or TikTok interact (e.g., a Meta prospecting campaign boosting branded Google search).
Refine Strategies in Real-Time: Identify when a channel hits diminishing returns and shift your budget to more efficient tactics.
Maximize Customer Acquisition: Track how spend affects metrics like new customers and CAC; discover the interplay of prospecting vs. retargeting budgets.

No matter your role, Prescient transforms marketing data into actionable insights, helping you connect spend decisions to your business goals.

When Not to Use Prescient

Prescient’s MMM approach requires consistent, reliable data. It might not be ideal for:

Marketing Homogeneity: MMM works very well when theres diversity in your approach to marketing. That means if you're only marketing on 2 channels (e.g. Meta + Google), the MMM may not uncover a whole lot of information you don't already know. Brands that advertise on at least 3 different channels would be the starting point that an MMM works the best.
Short-Term or Small-Scale Tests: Campaigns running for fewer than 7 days or with minimal spend (e.g., less than $25/day per campaign) may lack the data needed for statistically significant insights. Instead, consider combining similar campaigns or extending their duration to create a richer dataset for analysis.
Limited Data Availability: MMM requires consistent inputs like daily spend, impressions, and revenue. If data is incomplete or unreliable (e.g., testing a new channel with insufficient tracking), focus on improving data collection processes, such as using Google Sheets integrations or manual uploads, to prepare for future analysis.
Attribution-Specific Needs: For granular, short-term results (e.g., last-click performance for a Google brand search), Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) may provide faster answers. However, MMM remains essential for revealing the long-term, cross-channel impact of your marketing mix.

Why MMM Still Matters
Even if MMM can’t immediately address every use case, it excels at revealing long-term patterns and delayed effects. Laying a foundation of consistent data collection now ensures you’ll be ready to harness Prescient’s strategic insights later.

What you can accomplish with Prescient

Prescient supports every step of your decision-making process, helping you make smarter marketing investments. Whether you’re exploring new opportunities or refining your strategy, Prescient empowers you to:

Discover channel and campaign-level insights: Identify which marketing channels drive the most revenue and efficiency. For example, Prescient can reveal how Meta prospecting campaigns boost the effectiveness of branded search efforts, helping you optimize your spend allocation.
Measure halo effects and long-term growth: Prescient goes beyond immediate results, helping you understand how upper-funnel campaigns indirectly contribute to bottom-line revenue over time. For instance, campaigns on newer, emerging channels may show lower initial returns but drive significant halo effects that impact customer acquisition across other channels.
Forecast outcomes to allocate budgets confidently: Use predictive insights to anticipate the impact of budget adjustments on key metrics like CAC, ROAS, and new customer acquisition. For example, Prescient’s saturation curves and decay models allow you to see when additional spend reaches diminishing returns, helping you reallocate resources for maximum impact.
Align spend strategies with broader business goals: Whether you’re aiming to balance CAC with long-term revenue growth or optimize for profitability during a seasonal push, Prescient provides clarity. Its additive modeling approach separates base revenue from halo effects, giving you a complete picture to make informed decisions.

With Prescient, your marketing data transforms into a strategic asset, enabling you to connect every dollar spent to measurable, sustainable outcomes.

Components of Prescient’s MMM

Prescient models account for:

Base Revenue vs. Halo Effects: Differentiate between direct conversions and delayed or indirect impact and measure how one channel influences the performance of others.
Seasonality: Adjust for seasonal spikes in customer behavior.
Saturation: Identify when additional spend yields diminishing returns.
Decay: Factor in how quickly campaign effects fade over time.
Trends: Track baseline growth or declines unrelated to marketing.
Confidence: Quantify the reliability of model predictions.

More details are available in our Modeled Attribution and Methodologies articles.

Understanding relationships

Spend and Revenue: Increasing spend often drives higher revenue, but the relationship isn’t always linear. Channels or campaigns may reach a point of diminishing returns, where additional spend yields less incremental revenue. Prescient identifies these saturation points to ensure you allocate your budget where it will have the most impact.
Spend and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend): ROAS measures the efficiency of your marketing efforts. While increasing spend may drive more revenue, it can also lower ROAS if campaigns become saturated or less efficient. Prescient helps you strike a balance by showing how incremental spend impacts ROAS at different levels.
Spend and New Customers: Higher spend often brings in more new customers, but the cost of acquiring them (CAC) may increase as you scale. Prescient highlights which channels or campaigns are most effective at attracting new customers while keeping CAC manageable, helping you maximize growth without overspending.
Spend and CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost): As spend increases, CAC can fluctuate depending on channel performance, competition, and audience saturation. Prescient's dashboard allows you to track and predict these changes, ensuring that your budget drives sustainable acquisition at a reasonable cost.
CAC and Revenue: Lowering CAC often improves profitability, but focusing solely on reducing CAC can sometimes limit revenue growth. Channels with higher CAC may still drive significant lifetime value (LTV) or incremental revenue. Prescient provides insights into this tension, helping you find the right balance between efficiency and growth to align with your broader business goals.

More details are available in our Methodologies article.

Key Features at a Glance

Performance Measurement: Track key insights on the homepage and analyze channel and campaigns over time on the Performance page.
Modeled Attribution: Use MMM to measure marketing’s impact on revenue, capturing delayed effects that MTA misses.
Halo Effects: Quantify how campaigns indirectly influence other channels or future conversions for better budget decisions.
Campaign Forecasting: Predict marketing outcomes and adjust spend proactively to maximize efficiency.
Spend Optimization: Get data-driven budget recommendations to optimize ROAS and minimize CAC across channels.