Marketers can take control of ROI right out of the gate with Avista, a new real-time marketing simulation, forecasting, and optimization system that enables them to fine-tune strategies, brand plans and media executions before committing to them.
Avista is a new suite of services from Marketing Management Analytics (MMA) of Wilton, Connecticut. MMA, a unit of Aegis Group and sister company to media management multinational, Carat, has been pioneering marketing mix modeling since it was established 1989. At that time, marketing analysis was primarily a look back at how tactics performed.
Today, marketers want to look forward – and that’s where Avista comes in.
John Nardone, EVP product development and marketing for MMA, says clients want more timely and more-consistent real-time analysis. They want to know how to allocate their budget across all the same media and marketing options to get a better return.
Simply put, Nardone says, Avista sucks in data from all of the client’s data sources on an ongoing basis and then runs that data through the models continuously.
‘Clients can log in via their desktop computers and have up-to-date access to their data, to the results of the model analysis, and then at their own time and place, run the simulations that allow them to play the what-if games.’
While Avista is a very advanced analytic tool behind the scenes, it’s interfaces are designed for the end user in the marketing department and don’t require any special technical skills. The system is Web-based and the technology is invisible to users.
Nardone says, ‘What we’ve done is create a view for the marketing manager and a more granular set of functions for the research manager at a company who wants to have access to the functionality in a more detailed and hands-on level.’
There is virtually no limit to the types of data sources that can be used with Avista. Audience measurement data, syndicated, survey and panel data can all be put into the hopper. If a client relies on 10 data streams for making decisions, the model takes in those 10 variables.
Ed See, MMA’s EVP of product development and technology, says the Avista system can take almost any standardized data format and harmonize that and relate it back to sales events or advertising.
See says, ‘For some of our clients we actually take data feeds from the Center for Disease Control to track fever rates and flu rates that run through both the U.S. and Canada. We’re really looking for the brand manger to see the implications, be able to draw the insights and be able to really understand recommendations.’
Avista is a subscription service that will be updated twice a year. It is also applicable in all markets, and MMA already works with several large Canadian marketers with its other marketing mix tools.
The client version of Avista will be ready in February but there is a lot of individualized work that MMA has to be done before the client turns the key. From handshake to start up takes roughly three months, depending on the amount and variability of the data and the type of reports the client requires.
Avista for media scheduling will be in place for agencies by the end of 2005. That version leverages the models to find optimal media allocation across time, geography, spot versus national buy, and daypart as well as looking at cost of GRPs over time and the saturation and decay curves of advertising.
