Marketing Science

Your MMM Should Not Predict Revenue

Revenue is a derived quantity. Marketing influences demand, units sold, not price. Modeling revenue directly entangles two mechanisms and produces misleading attribution.

Cyril Noirot

January 12, 2026

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6 min read

Which channels drive demand? Where should the next dollar go? What happens if we cut spend on display and shift it to TV?

To answer any of these, the model must isolate how marketing influences sales. And this is where most implementations make a structural mistake.

$$ \text{Revenue}t = f(\text{Marketing}t, \text{Seasonality}t, \text{Controls}t) $$

This seems natural. Revenue is the KPI the business tracks. It's what gets reported to the board.

About the author

Cyril Noirot

Lead Data Scientist

Freelance data scientist. I design and ship decision systems — forecasting, pricing, marketing measurement, optimization.

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