From hindsight to foresight: How Meridian closes the MMM ‘actionability gap’

Marketing mix modelling (MMM) has become a key survival tool for marketers today.

As traditional tracking fails with the proliferation of channels and unpredictable shopper journeys, MMM has emerged as an essential tool for measuring past marketing effectiveness.

But hindsight isn’t enough to help brands thrive. To drive future growth, you need to close the “actionability gap” — the disconnect between having MMM insights and the ability to act on them in real time.

It’s a challenge many marketers face. Only 28% of respondents say their organisation is very effective at converting MMM insights into timely and impactful actions, according to a global survey conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services.¹

One modern MMM built to close that gap is Google’s Meridian. Since its launch in January 2025, thousands of advertisers have used its results to gain foresight, optimise spend, and increase ROI.

In fact, Meridian’s results are helping advertisers achieve double-digit increases in revenues or conversions, according to our analysis of Meridian projects commissioned by Google in APAC and delivered by 12 certified partners.

Here are three ways Meridian can help your business close the actionability gap, and serve as your forward-looking strategic planner to drive profitable growth.

1. Cross-channel measurement: A unified view for confident action

Today’s marketers use an average of 10 channels to engage shoppers across their omnichannel journey. That complexity makes it vital for marketers to use an MMM that’s capable of measuring across many channels to provide a holistic view of what truly drives business outcomes.

Meridian is designed for this modern reality. Unlike traditional MMMs that were built primarily for offline media, Meridian measures incremental marketing impact across the full spectrum: from TV and Out-of-Home media to online channels like YouTube, Search and social media.

How to apply Meridian’s unique features: Integrate Google Query Volume (GQV) as a control variable in your MMM. GQV lets Meridian isolate the true incremental impact of your Search ad spend, stripping away noise caused by seasonality and external demand shifts.

Another best practice: Treat paid search campaigns targeting brand-specific queries and generic queries as two separate channels in your model. That’s especially helpful for online businesses: By teasing out the incremental impact of paid search from organic demand, you can get clearer direct signals of latent consumer demand.

Move from insights to action: Advertisers are turning to Meridian’s advanced measurement to pinpoint how different channels, particularly online ones, contribute to their desired outcomes. According to Meridian partners in APAC, 71% of projects measure online KPIs, while 29% measure offline KPIs or a combination of both.²

By using Meridian’s insights to fuel its Google Ads solutions, Thai financial services provider Ngern Tid Lor is now able to scale media investments and drive stronger results, including higher conversion volume.

2. Reach and frequency modelling: Precise insights optimise results

As shoppers move fluidly across channels, the optimal balance of ad reach and frequency for each channel can vary widely.

Reach measures how many people see the ad, while frequency measures how often they see it. To find the sweet spot where those two metrics optimise your budget for the best ROI, you need precise measurement for every channel.

Meridian’s modelling identifies the optimal average frequency that maximises ROI for a given channel. These operational insights guide you to spend up to the point where frequency turns into ad fatigue, and ROI starts to diminish.

How Meridian helps you optimise cross-channel spend: Meridian’s innovative reach and frequency modelling lets you analyse the incremental effects of different media, especially video advertising, where the two metrics are particularly important.

You can also use channel-level contribution analysis to directly integrate prior business knowledge into the model. Together, those features let you conduct reliable comparisons across publishers, so you can identify more opportunities for optimising your media mix.

Already, 70% of projects involving YouTube spend have utilised reach and frequency modelling with Meridian, according to Meridian partners in APAC.³

Move from insights to results: By collaborating with Meridian partners, your business can better reconcile disparate channel data into a unified strategy for optimising ad spend. That’s what furniture brand Castlery is doing to drive longer-term marketing effectiveness.

Similarly, the APAC clients of agency Hakuhodo DY Group are tapping its expertise to fully use Meridian’s capabilities, including optimal frequency analyses and ROI simulations. A beverage manufacturer, for example, identified a roughly 10% ROI improvement for its YouTube TV campaigns.

3. Test-learn-plan: Holistic measurement drives growth

Future-ready marketers are harnessing Meridian as a strategic planning engine. When integrated with continuous experimentation, Meridian delivers the dynamic measurement they need to stay ahead in a fast-evolving media landscape.

One example is United Arab Emirates-based property platform Bayut. It’s using Meridian’s deep insights to elevate its media planning to a whole new level of efficiency.

How to plan ahead using Meridian’s new features: To progress from one-off measurement to a test-learn-plan cycle, use the Scenario Planner. The user-friendly interface lets you experiment with different budget scenarios, such as fixed budgets, target ROI, and channel-level spending constraints. No coding is required, so you can easily generate real-time ROI estimates.

Move from insights to scale: You can further ground your model in real-world results, by using Meridian as part of an open-source measurement stack. Integrate Meridian with our latest solutions such as:

• Incrementality testing to help you validate and refine your model’s performance signals. In particular, tap Meridian GeoX, Google’s open-source, geo-based solution for causal measurement, which is coming later this year. It lets you run transparent, cost-effective, publisher-agnostic experiments that calibrate Meridian with causal ground truth.
• Meridian Studio to help you build, customise, and manage Meridian at scale. Built on Google Cloud, this new enterprise solution offers a guided workflow with a user-friendly interface that makes Meridian faster and easier to use.

The media landscape is increasingly complex, but your measurement doesn’t have to be. Use Meridian to turn MMM insights into impactful action and strategic plans, ensuring your next decision is always your smartest and most profitable.

Contributors: Siddharth Shrivastava, APAC Product Strategy Lead; Quan Nguyen, APAC MMM Specialist; Isha Puri, APAC MMM Specialist