Open-source Media Mix Modeling (MMM) tools are everywhere right now and with good reason. They’re free, privacy-friendly, and full of potential. They offer a promising way to move beyond cookie-based measurement and regain visibility into what’s really driving performance. But as many teams are discovering, open-source tools alone aren’t the perfect solution. Without structure, strategy, and the right team behind it, even the best algorithm can fall short. 

At Ovative, we’ve been building and evolving MMMs for more than 15 years. That experience shaped our Modern MMM+ , a key part of our marketing intelligence platform, EMRge™. It’s designed to help brands measure true incremental impact across channels and make confident decisions, faster. So, while we know our proprietary MMM solution can truly drive your business forward, open-source MMMs may simply be the right next step for your brand.  

If you’ve already explored what open-source MMMs can—and can’t—do for your organization, and know you’ve got the right team in place, we’re here to help you take the next step. Below, we’re breaking down the six steps for transforming raw code into scalable, business-ready solutions.

1. Start With Business Needs, Not Code

Before you even open Robyn or PyMC-Marketing, get clear on what your team needs to know. Whether it’s reallocating spend, measuring promotions, or proving the value of upper-funnel channels, your model should answer what matters most for your business. Instead of starting with what the model can do, ask yourself: 

• What decisions are we trying to make today? 

• What decisions will I need to make next quarter? 

• What do we not understand today that’s slowing us down? 

• How will we use the results? 

2. Choose the Right Tool

Not all open-source MMMs are created equal. You don’t need the “best” tool, you need the one that fits your team, goals, and tech. A few we often recommend: 

• PyMC Labs’ PyMC-Marketing: Great for flexible and robust Bayesian modeling 

• Meta’s Robyn: Ideal for speed, transparency, and automation 

• Google’s Meridian: Best for scalability and integrating into Google’s stack 

3. Customize for Your Business

Your MMM shouldn’t look like anyone else’s. It should reflect your reality not just benchmarks or defaults. Open-source tools give you a head start, but real value comes when you tailor them to your needs. We recommend: 

• Automating repetitive modeling steps 

• Formatting outputs so they’re ease to interpret 

• Incorporating your unique business context seasonality, regionality, inventory, and more 

4. Integrate Into Your Systems and Workflows

You’ve built a great model, now make sure people can actually use it. Too often, models live in silos. If you want your open-source MMM to truly drive business impact, create a shared system your marketing, analytics, and finance teams can all access. At Ovative, we connect client MMMs to: 

• MLflow: Tracking server that enables efficient management and tracking of model iterations 

• Google Cloud Platform (GCP): Centralized, secure storage of results in Big Query or Google Cloud Storage 

5. Make Insights Actionable For Everyone

If your marketing team can’t run a scenario or interpret a recommendation without a data scientist explaining it, you’re not done yet. Great teams use tools like Streamlit and Posit Connect to build user-friendly dashboards for their models where marketers can: 

• Simulate different budget scenarios 

• Analyze what’s driving performance 

• Forecast outcomes based on real inputs 

6. Use It, Evolve It, Repeat

You don’t need to get your MMM perfect on day one, you just need to keep improving.  The brands that get MMMs right don’t treat it like a one-time analysis. They treat it like a product. That means: 

• Running models regularly and iterating as the business evolves 

• Embedding insights into quarterly planning and budget discussions 

• Continuously refining inputs, assumptions, and variables 

Make the Model Work for You—Not the Other Way Around

As cookies disappear, data gets noisier, and budgets face tighter scrutiny, modern marketers need a better way to measure and manage what’s working. Open-source MMMs offer you that, but only if you make it work for your needs. 

We’ve seen what’s possible when the right structure is in place. Our clients have used this exact playbook to: 

• Confidently shift spend mid-season based on real performance, not guesswork 

• Align marketing, finance, and leadership on what’s working 

• Prove the value of brand spend even when short-term signals fall short 

If your team is ready to take on open-source MMMs and build a system that drives faster, smarter decisions, our measurement experts are here to help. 

And, if open-source feels like more than you want to take on let our experts do it for you. Our EMRge™ marketing intelligence platform was built to deliver those same insights without the heavy lift. It brings everything together, from measurement to activation, so your team can focus on what matters most: making confident, impact-driven decisions. 

Because at the end of the day, it’s not all about the model. It’s about what you do with it. And we’re here to help you make it work for you.