Data science company Arima has launched a Marketing Mix Modelling tool, which it intends to make faster, more affordable and better integrated than other options.

Arima’s MMM tool combines live market mix modeling, consumer insights discovery and media planning tools into one source. Marketers can integrate MMM reporting into Arima’s other tools or their own platforms and budget optimization cycles, enabling real-time discussions with finance while collaborating with agencies.

The self-serve platform allows users to select the econometric, landscape and competitive inputs, along with their media spend and sales data. Media spend can be further broken down into sub-channels, such as national and specialty TV, or creative flights. Once new inputs or revisions are in place, it takes approximately 20 minutes for the algorithm to generate the report.

One of the big selling points of Arima’s MMM tool is that it is integrated with the company’s synthetic data, which leads to several benefits. According to Arima, its MMM can get results within weeks, as opposed to traditional MMMs that take three to six months to build. Using synthetic data with an advertiser’s own data also allows for testing of millions of correlations and “what if” scenarios, as well as ongoing machine learning to generate more accurate and up-to-date results.

“This is the set of tools I wanted to have when I was on the agency side: powerful, fast, and highly integrated,” says Arima co-founder Winston Li, who is also a former director of data science at Omnicom Media Group. “We don’t see any competitors where self-serve MMM is integrated with national synthetic populations anywhere.”

Arima recommends close collaboration between marketers and media agencies for the best utilization of the MMM platform. While some marketers already conduct MMM in-house, these solutions are often separate and not integrated with media planning tools. The company says it is important for the data to seamlessly integrate into media budget allocations, as there is a distinction between having knowledge and actively applying it.

In addition, Arima is making its MMM platform free for Canadian charities, because they too need to understand how their media efforts turn into donation outcomes.