Mutinex has debuted a new pilot for outcome-based media activation during Cannes Lions.
The Hershey Company is participating as an early tester, while The Trade Desk is partnering with the pair to support activation across programmatic environments.
The pilots allow brands to connect media investment more directly to measurable real business results, such as incremental sales or revenue lift, customer, while across ad format, publisher and specific creative executions.
No longer do brands need to optimise for proxy metrics, such as impressions, reach or CPMs. This brings media buying closer to the financial metrics that matter to executives and boards.
As a result, brands may find that more expensive, premium inventory delivers significantly improved business outcomes and then be able to justify the greater investment.
“Outcome‑based activation requires continuous, reliable measurement of real business impact. Over the past year, we’ve built the systems that make outcomes not just measurable, but actionable,” said Henry Innis, founder and CEO of Mutinex.
Outcome-based media activation aims to address several long‑standing challenges for growth and finance leaders. Mutinex said it significantly speeds the process to connect media spend and revenue to inform planning cycles and budget reallocation as well as facilitating continuous performance assessments.
This, Mutinex said, will help position marketing as a managed investment rather than a fixed cost.
In Cannes, the Mutinex demonstration showed how outcome signals can be made actionable in biddable environments and how closed‑loop optimisation works across search, open‑web, and selected social platforms. It also showed how the model can scale across categories and markets.
However, the technology can extend to any media channel, given the right partners. Mutinex has also been working with another partner on another pilot.
“The tool provides the signals back to the brand to give them the confidence to move away from asking what they need to pay for an ad, or what they need to pay to reach a person in the market to looking across the market and assessing what a particular combination of environments is worth to them to influence a person,” Innis told B&T.
Hershey has already used the tool to shift from infrequent MMM cycles to more frequent, portfolio‑wide modelling. In turn, this has allowed media investment plans to be adjusted faster and with greater confidence.
It has also allowed the confectioner to respond to market conditions with fresher, more informed data. This, Mutinex said, is especially relevant in volatile or inflationary environments — or, simply, the world we’re all living in.
“Our goal is to move faster, make better decisions, and tie every dollar of spend to real business impact. Mutinex has helped us build the foundation to explore activating outcomes in real time,” said Vinny Rinaldi, VP, consumer connections, The Hershey Company.
“For too long, advertisers have had to rely on proxy metrics to evaluate success. The future is about optimising toward outcomes that matter to the business. We’re excited to work with innovators like Mutinex and brands like Hershey to explore how real‑world business signals can be activated across the open internet, giving marketers greater transparency, agility, and accountability,” added Jordan Rost, VP product, The Trade Desk.
Hershey had previously ran media mix models three times a year, providing a significant months-long lag between the data it uses and the time it receives results.
Over the past year, the company has worked with Mutinex and Tracer to create AI infrastructure that allows it assess performance every month, using four- and 12-week lookbacks.
“When our systems fully launch in May, we’ll have the ability to make fast, informed decisions about where our advertising dollars go based on what’s actually happening right now in the market, not what happened months ago,” Hershey vice president of Consumer Connections Vinny Rinaldi said.
“In the past, we’ve focused on reach. Now, we’re prioritising relevance, boosting the efficiency of every dollar spent.”
Last month, Mutinex launched a new self-serve MMM tool, promising to make advanced marketing analytics available to all.
