MARKETING EFFECTIVENESS ACCELERATOR (MEA) : 2025 (formerly Attribution & Analytics Accelerator)

the EARLY MOVER rate ends on Oct. 6

OVERVIEW

2025 EVENT CONTENT IS NOW AVAILABLE.

The Marketing Effectiveness Accelerator is the only event dedicated exclusively to attribution, marketing mix models, and the science of marketing performance measurement. Top minds will present empirically grounded case studies that demonstrate how leading brands are solving today’s toughest challenges, such as:

Unlocking brand equity to fuel long-term sales growth
Cross-channel creative optimization that drives impact at scale
A unified model combining attribution and clickstream data for sharper journey predictions
Next-gen MMM implementations revealing nine-figure revenue potential and ROI lifts
Breakthrough auction design boosting commerce media profitability
Automated measurement delivering detailed ROIs in just five weeks

This gathering will accelerate innovation, deepen scientific understanding, and mobilize the industry toward best practices. B2C and B2B marketers from across industries will exchange client-tested experiences, share fresh perspectives, and explore next-generation techniques—from AI-powered attribution to retail media MMM—that are redefining marketing effectiveness.

The Marketing Effectiveness Accelerator is the only event dedicated exclusively to attribution, marketing mix models, and the science of marketing performance measurement. On November 12, leading experts presented empirically grounded case studies that demonstrate how leading brands are solving today’s toughest challenges.

2025 Topics

The 2025 agenda will be announced soon. It will cover the following topics:

AI-Driven Modeling: Promise vs. Practicality

Data Complexity & Identity Resolution

New Methods and Data Sources in Marketing Performance Measurement

Business Impact & Value Attribution

Branding: Macroeconomics, Attribution, and Predictive Analytics

Creative Optimization

SUBMISSION DEADLINE: July 11, 2025

All submissions must be entered through our digital portal. Within the portal, you’ll need to include:

Submission Title
Topic
Brief Description
Three Most Important Insights
One Sentence Summary
Business Questions, Results & Methodology
Presenters, including a brand, end-user, academic, or neutral third-party (name, title, company).

For any questions, reach out to sara@thearf.org.

Sequent Accelerator Award

The Sequent Accelerator Award celebrates technical advances in key aspects of marketing analytics – spanning the modeling processes, metrics, data acquisition, AI applications, insight dissemination and organizational adoption.

In keeping with the spirit of the Marketing Effectiveness Accelerator (The Accelerator), this Award recognizes innovative solutions that deliver meaningful brand impact and advance the discipline of marketing analytics. It celebrates approaches that inspire progress and accelerate measurable effectiveness on brands and across the industry.

The winners were recognized at The Accelerator on November 12, 2025.

Speakers

2025 Advisory Committee

We express our gratitude to our Advisory Committee members. This esteemed group of practitioners and academics combined their collective knowledge and curiosity to generate the topics for this year’s MARKETING EFFECTIVENESS ACCELERATOR (MEA) Call for Content.

Agenda

8:00 – 9:00am	Breakfast & Registration
9:00 – 9:10am	Opening Remarks Scott McDonald, Ph.D. – President & CEO, ARF
	New Tools and Data Sources Using advanced attribution, clean rooms, and next-gen MMM tools to improve marketing performance and revenue results.
9:10-9:30am	Advancing MMM Best Practices for Strategic Budget Allocation Traditional MMM methodologies are challenged under the weight of media complexity, demanding ROI proof, and privacy changes. The industry requires new approaches based on open-source transparency, advanced causal inference, and richer data signals. Google will share perspectives on this necessary methodological evolution, highlighting progress in actionability, calibration, and media-specific challenges. The session culminates in a fireside chat with TransUnion focused on advanced data utilization and the path to optimal budget allocation to unlock confident, strategic investment decisions. Mike Finnerty – SVP Marketing Solutions Services, TransUnion Harikesh Nair – Senior Director, Data Science & Engineering, Google
9:30 – 9:50am	From Fragmented Analytics to Unified Revenue Decisions: Large Causal Models for Enterprise Growth Discover how POEM365—a Large Causal Model trained on $5 trillion in transaction data across 15,000 brands—delivered a unified revenue growth decision-making platform for one of the world’s largest advertisers. Learn how counterfactual causal reasoning, rather than correlation-based attribution, enables the Decision AI framework to simultaneously predict, prescribe, and optimize across all revenue drivers in one integrated model—solving the fundamental limitation of siloed MMM approaches and enabling enterprise-wide revenue optimization at scale. Bharath Gaddam – CEO & Founder, DATA POEM
9:50 – 10:10am	Intelligent Digital Attribution Intelligent Digital Attribution (IDA) is an automated, rapid-turnaround measurement system that delivers ROI within five weeks of a campaign’s conclusion. Unlike typical MMM, it provides highly granular insights by platform, format, audience, objectives, placements, and creative themes—helping to enhance Kenvue’s media efficiency and effectiveness continuously. Ross Link – CEO, Marketing Attribution LLC Aleks Petkovski – Senior Director – Data Science and AI, Kenvue
10:10 – 10:30am	Unlocking $100M Revenue Potential: Alaska Airlines with Google Meridian MMM This case study examines Adswerve’s three-month implementation of Google’s open-source Meridian marketing mix model (MMM) for Alaska Airlines. Using advanced analytics and granular data (including GQV), the model projected an 11% increase in addressable advertising revenue (about $100M) and a 3% ROI improvement. The study highlights how modern MMMs can be applied to quantify business outcomes and inform media strategy in complex data environments. Luka Cempre – Head of Data Modernization and Cloud Strategy, Adswerve Owen Bickford – Paid Search Program Manager, Alaska Airlines
10:30 – 11:00am	Morning Break
11:00 – 11:20am	From Audience to Impact: Nielsen’s Framework for Modern Measurement In this session, Nielsen shares their outcome measurement principles: 1) Audience and outcome measurements should be connected and seamless, with measurement and outcomes linked to planning as an end-to-end capability; 2) Collaboration is essential, and no one provider has all the answers; 3) Context is key. How does the use of AI with normative data enable outcome measurements to be estimated where measurement is unavailable or unaffordable? 4) Independent and consistent measurement of outcomes benefits both the buy and sell sides, and independent measurement is crucial for transparency and comparability; 5) Methodology matters. The data and methods used should be transparent, validated, and consistently applied. An assessment of the likely margin of error should also be available. Additionally, measurement continues to evolve with techniques such as Bayesian modeling, data pooling, and synthetic data models. Pete Doe – Chief Research Officer, Nielsen Shweta Shah – VP of Data Science, Nielsen
	Journey-Driven Media Optimization Integrating user journey signals to inform media planning decisions.
11:20 – 11:40am	Unmixed Signals: Connecting Brand Equity and Long-Term Sales First of its kind, global research by Circana and Meta reveals the link between brand equity and long-term sales, providing regional and vertical insights to inform smarter brand investments. It also provides marketers the confidence to make cross-channel budget optimizations based on validated brand equity KPIs. Matthew Sharp – Marketing Science Partner, Meta Tsvetan “T.” Tsvetkov – SVP, Head of Global MMM Consulting, Circana
11:40am – 12:00pm	Beyond Legacy MTA: Using AI-Transformer Based Intelligence to Drive Marketing Prioritization Traditional multi-touch attribution models struggle with dependencies among sequences of touchpoints and fail to integrate marketing channel attribution with on-site clickstream behavior. MTAi™, developed for Memorial Sloan Kettering, integrates marketing channel attribution with on-site behavior, capturing sequential touchpoint dependencies that legacy models miss. The approach enables unified insights to optimize spend, site experience, and conversions. Grant West, Ph.D. – Senior Director, Marketing Science Client Services, in4mation insights Adam Graves – Senior Director, Marketing Measurement, Analytics & Insights, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
12:00 – 12:20pm	Positivity Performs: Ad Environments’ Critical Role in Media Planning Historically, little attention has been paid to how customers feel on a platform. This research marks the next step in the industry’s evolving considerations of ad environments, moving beyond avoiding negative environments to exploring what brands should actively seek out in ad environments to drive better outcomes. This research–using survey-based impact analysis, neuroscience testing and marketing mix modelling–explored links between a range of ad environment attributes and brand outcomes. The findings show positive environments are a measurable driver of brand favorability, preference, and purchase intent. Aligning media placements with positive, emotionally resonant and cognitively optimal environments can significantly enhance consumer engagement and sales outcomes-without altering creative or increasing spend. Jenna Landi – Director of Global Brand Research, Pinterest Jonathan Jusczyk – SVP, Science & Engineering Intelligence Solutions, MAGNA
12:20 – 1:20pm	Lunch
	New Approaches for Traditional Channels Maximizing growth beyond traditional media signals in particular channels.
1:20 – 1:40pm	Digitas + KitchenAid: Creative Optimization For KitchenAid Smalls, Digitas combined creative analysis, MMM, and sentiment testing to separate media and creative impact. By assessing 2024 media for wear-out across themes like Durability, Performance, and Café Anarchy, the project pinpointed when creative stopped driving incremental lift—helping optimize spend, refresh timing, and messaging strategy. Mitch Cooper – Brand Manager, KitchenAid Smalls; Whirlpool Corporation Meghan Dimas – Director of Data & Analysis, Digitas Brett Rustin – VP/Group Director of Data & Analysis, Digitas
1:40 – 2:00pm	Optimizing Price Floors and Audiences to Maximize Monetization in Commerce Media McKinsey projects that Commerce Media spending will quickly increase from $40 billion in 2023 to $100 billion in 2027, accounting for nearly a quarter of all ad expenditure. One of McKinsey’s main recommendations is for commerce media ad networks to “use data-driven strategies to maximize ad revenue across different types of inventory.” This project fits within this area by applying auction theory and advertiser data to help retailers set optimal price floors and monetize first-party audiences across display and search inventory, supporting efficiency in a rapidly expanding commerce media landscape. Carl Mela, Ph.D. – Professor, Duke University Jason Pratt – General Manager, Koddi
2:00 – 2:20pm	Improving Media Efficiency with Frequency-Based YouTube Modeling A Circana pilot with Google and MolsonCoors found that adjusting YouTube reach and frequency improves ROAS. Using Google’s Reach & Frequency metrics in Circana’s MMM, the study highlights a scalable, data-driven method for optimizing digital video investment. Yeimy Garcia Smith – SVP of Global Measurement, Circana Madison McDonough – Food & Beverage Analytical Lead, Big Box Retail, Google Michelle Wojnowski – Senior Manager, Marketing Analytics and Optimization, Molson Coors
	Next-Gen Statistical Modeling Applying advanced statistical methods and granular data to analyze marketing performance.
2:20 – 2:40pm	Flipping the Script: How Supply-Side Modeling Can Deepen Client Relationships Traditionally, measurement data modeling has focused on the demand side, largely due to the availability of vast datasets. But what if publishers and media companies could offer their clients a broader view of performance? How might that shift the partnerships with clients? Discover how People Inc. embarked on this journey—using advanced modeling techniques to highlight the “why” behind performance—and how it has strengthened client relationships and demonstrated greater value. Mike Lichter – Sr. Director, Campaign Insights, People Inc. Samantha Powers – VP, Measurement Innovation, People Inc.
2:40 – 3:10pm	Afternoon Break
3:10 – 3:30pm	Leveraging Large-Scale Granular Single-Source Data for TV Advertising This research introduces a novel method to estimate the causal impact of linear TV advertising using large-scale, single-source data that connect household-level TV viewing and ad exposure to daily purchasing. Results demonstrate that baseline purchase propensity and ad responsiveness vary systematically with both the frequency and recency of past purchases, yielding actionable insights for more effective behavioral targeting of TV ads. Rex Du – Professor of Marketing, University of Texas at Austin
3:30 – 3:50pm	The Future of IP Address as a Measurement Signal New research from CIMM highlights a potential canary in the coal mine for video measurement: the growing instability of IP addresses as identifiers for viewers. As the foundation for countless measurement products and platforms, this instability could signal fundamental challenges ahead for the entire video measurement ecosystem. Evan Cohen – SVP, Projects and Strategic Initiatives, CIMM Gregg Galletta – President, Truthset
3:50 – 4:10pm	Creative That Converts: A Neuroscientific Approach to Image Effectiveness Creative assets, especially images, play a critical role in driving marketing performance. But quantifying their impact has long been a challenge. This talk introduces a scalable NeuroAI framework that models how the human brain processes product images, offering a new way to predict which visuals will convert attention into action. Validated in the travel sector, the findings show that images with clear visual pathways and spatial structure drive more consumer action, while cluttered or cognitively demanding visuals suppress action. Crucially, the framework is industry-agnostic and can be applied across verticals and channels to help marketers and measurement teams better evaluate the creative elements that influence outcomes, informing attribution models, MMM inputs, and creative optimization at scale. Gijs Overgoor – Assistant Professor of Marketing, Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University
4:10 – 4:30pm	Refresh to Impress: Cadence Counts When Refreshing Your Marketing Mix Model Most Marketing Mix Models refresh infrequently and are slow to adapt to changing market, competitive, and consumer conditions. OptiMine conducted research to identify the optimal refresh cadence for models and has identified the lift potential of increasing model refreshes for brands that struggle with model sluggishness. Matt Voda – CEO, OptiMine
4:30 – 4:35pm	Analytic Partners Remarks Closing reflections on commercial imperatives shaping the future of marketing measurement. Mike Menkes – Group Senior Vice President, Analytic Partners
4:35 – 4:55pm	New this year! Sequent Accelerator Award Celebrates technical advances in key aspects of marketing analytics and recognizes innovative solutions that deliver meaningful brand impact and advance the discipline of marketing analytics. View the winners.
4:55 – 5:00pm	Closing Remarks Scott McDonald, Ph.D. – President & CEO, ARF
5:00 – 6:30pm	Cocktail Reception