Media & Market Testing

Driving Growth with Simulated Market Testing

Driving continuous, year-over-year growth requires constant experimentation, successful innovation and speed to market. To get ahead of the competition, leaders use data and predictive analytics to quickly identify, validate and scale in-market opportunities across media, new products and services, and operations investments.

With our Activate Simulated Marketing Testing Platform, combined with our consulting service model, companies can quickly deploy a trusted and scalable in-market testing capability across their organization.

In-Market Testing Software

Our Activate Testing Platform is designed to execute small scale tests for pricing, promotion, media, assortment, operations and facility upgrade decisions. With the results in hand, companies can estimate their response and integrate findings into their product and marketing planning, resulting in measurable incremental revenue and profit.

The Activate platform enables companies to:

• Rapidly test retail execution, pricing, promotion, media, assortment, and operations on a limited scale with low risk through an easy-to-use, web-based testing platform
• Analyze both naturally occurring and planned events to understand market response and the impact of deploying a new program through a broad rollout
• Socialize test results with cross-functional decision makers to drive activation

Improve Marketing, Positioning and Sales

Simulated market testing improves the performance of all aspects of your innovation efforts by answering the following critical business questions:

• How to get an early read on the impact of a significant change in media investment, new marketing channel or new campaign?
• How to manage the risk related to scaling a new media channel or campaign nationally?
• How to test various buying strategies to determine the optimal plan?
• How is a new campaign performing on a local level: geo-testing targeted campaigns?
• How is the new campaign working against specific targets in a test DMA?
• What is the right mix of media channels, creative, placement to support a new launch or high-growth brand?

Eliminate Assumptions and Decrease Risks

MMA’s market testing solution includes:

1. Web-based testing and reporting platform: Ipsos MMA’s In-Market Testing capability is based on an easy-to-understand and implement platform, driven by real-time data and our predictive testing and control matching algorithms.
2. Planning and design of the test: Ipsos MMA marketing analytics experts review the proposed media plan and provide thresholds (timing, weight, target) to ensure a successful test.
3. Test vs. control market definition to ensure accurate measurement:  By leveraging Ipsos MMA’s advanced matching algorithms, multiple control markets are identified for each test case.
4. Measurement of results: Ipsos MMA analysts engage with the market testing tool to understand lift by market, evaluate outliers, and understand lift differences across markets.
5. Predictive insights for scaling an activity: Ipsos MMA partners with clients and their agency partners to project the potential for scaling a marketing or operations program.

The Connection Between Marketing Mix Modeling and Market Testing

While marketing mix modeling (MMM) primarily relies on historical data to understand the past impact of marketing variables, market testing provides a way to validate and refine the findings of MMM by observing real-time consumer behavior in response to specific marketing interventions.

By combining the insights from market mix modeling and market testing, businesses can gain a more comprehensive understanding of how different marketing strategies and variables interact with real consumers in real-world scenarios. This integrated approach allows for data-driven decision-making and enables businesses to optimize their marketing mix, refine their strategies, and improve their overall marketing effectiveness.

Request a Demo of Activate, Our Market Testing Simulation Tool