Backed by some of Australia’s leading media heavyweights, commercial mix modelling platform Prophet helps companies evaluate the impact of channels in ‘near real-time’. Founder and CEO Jordan Taylor-Bartels and COO Hamish Mogan sat down with B&T to explain why they believe many current MMMs are flawed, and how their brand of “mathematically-grounded”, “empathetic” predictive analytics, which incorporates more than 86,000 sources of data, is ready to take on the analytics space and could be used beyond the marketing function.
In the Old Testament, a prophet was a figure who speaks God’s truths to others, often spreading messages of foresight and divine intervention.
Today, its phonetic sibling ‘profit’ is all about financial gain, margins and advantage.
The new kid on the block, Prophet, wants to straddle the two and believes it has the magic beans to rise to the very top of the analytics beanstalk.
Prophet CEO Jordan Taylor-Bartels said there are three fundamental flaws in marketing mix modelling (MMM).
Firstly, he argues that marketers using MMMs face a 30 to 90 day lag in receiving data, preventing real-time action.
Secondly, he claims many MMMs are not capable of assessing linear associations between different media channels, making it challenging to understand, for example, if TV, outdoor or radio advertising boosts the performance of other channels in the media mix.
Thirdly, he says that MMMs do not ingest enough macro-economic data to evaluate factors such as how weather changes, interest rate hikes, the impact of global conflicts and petrol prices might influence a consumer’s response to ads on YouTube, for example.
“We’ve been focusing on understanding and interrogating how marketing mixed models have been performing over the last four to five years, and come up with a solution that, as far as I’m concerned, is a quantum jump ahead,” Taylor-Bartels said.
“In Prophet’s case, we provide you with a profound understanding of how these platforms and media channels interact with one another, in near real-time, and how the macro-economic environment you’re playing within actually shapes that. We understand the cause and effect between these two, and we can overlay this with your commercial data to work out the direct and indirect impact of channels to your bottom line.
“CMOs are getting sacked left, right and centre and tenures are shockingly hot. Coming from a place of empathy, we want to enable better decisions.”
What is Prophet?
Prophet uses complex mathematical models to measure performance and run predictions that inform decision-making at the geographic region, campaign, category and even the SKU or product level.
It can ingest more than 86,000 macro data points – such as exchange rates, weather, age demographics, political events, cash rates, inflation targets, rental vacancy rates, gold price, competitor market share, and others – that contextualises this data to understand how external factors will impact channel investment and campaign decisions.
It can integrate with any data source via its API library, CSV submission and smart natural language processing, with just 6-8 weeks’ onboarding.
The platform is modular, which means companies can start small, such as with marketing intelligence, and then bolt on commercial intelligence, calculating price and promo and developments like churn and loyalty.
Mogan, a former analytics lead at Sportsbet and head of measurement at Meta, told B&T it is this combination of calculating marketing, commercial and macroeconomic data that convinced him to join the business as chief operations officer and VP of marketing science in June.
“This solution allows marketers to simulate how the macroeconomic environment and competitors will impact their marketing decisions. For example, what if Trump get into power and the arse falls out of the Aussie dollar – what does that mean for our business,” he said.
“In previous roles, I’ve worked with CMOs every day as they are pitching to their boards to justify what they’re doing and how they’re going to respond to the next fire that they’ve got to put out. We’re building something that is literally going to solve that problem for them and be a genuine trusted adviser to those CMOs.
“Prophet has been built for the purpose of empathy. We aren’t here to revolt or stick it to agencies or tell marketers they should be fired.”
Moving beyond MMM
Formed four years ago, the Melbourne-based Prophet now has half a dozen clients in sectors including retail, insurance, on demand delivery, gambling and wagering and cyber security.
The business is the brainchild of CEO Jordan Taylor-Bartels and executive chair Sean Taylor, both from the indie media agency Magic. It has about a dozen staff and key executives include co-founder and chief science officer Patrick Robotham (a mathematician and data scientist), chief data officer John Strumilla (formerly of Deloitte, NAB), Clyde So (ex Removify) chief developer, chief commercial officer Paul Veltman (formerly Dentsu’s VP of growth and enablement) and Hamish Mogan (ex-Meta and Sportsbet).
Prophet raised $5 million in funding earlier this year and is being backed by heavy hitters, including Antony Catalano, executive chair of View Media Group and former Domain CEO; Seek co-founder Matt Rockman; and former Dentsu CEO Cheuk Chiang.
Although bullish about Prophet’s future, Taylor-Bartels said Prophet will strike a balance between aggressive growth and sustainable growth, depending on economic conditions, but the business will not “raise funds for the sake of it”.
How the tool gains traction outside of the marketing department could hold the key to its growth trajectory.
Prophet’s ultimate ambition is to move beyond the MMM space, helping to inform business decisions on everything from marketing to fulfilment, warehousing, price and promotion elasticity, operations, finance, and business models.
“Prophet can harness this ecosystem today with a multitude of different models that aren’t just marketing,” Taylor-Bartels said.
“We believe this is the most powerful predictive analytics operating system in-market and we’re going to take some big leaps over the next five years to ensure that happens.”
