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Media mix

Media mix is the split of a store's advertising budget between channels, such as Google Ads, Meta ads and advertising on marketplaces.

How it works

Each channel in the mix has its own job. Search and Shopping ads reach people already looking for a product; Meta and YouTube mostly reach people who are not looking yet. So each channel needs its own measure of success (which channels to add first).

The split is decided by what the next unit of spend brings. An average return describes money already spent; as spend grows, a channel saturates and each extra unit brings less. Google’s documentation for Meridian, its marketing mix model, calls the channels with the highest return on extra spend the best place for additional funds.

Each platform also counts only the sales it credits to itself. A halo effect can move part of one channel’s result into another’s report (splitting a budget between channels).

There is no single right split: it depends on margin, existing demand for the products and what each channel adds. Some call it the “marketing mix”, but the classic marketing mix is wider: product, price, place and promotion.

Formula

Channel share = channel spend ÷ total ad spend

Example

Example store, not client data.

The tableware shop spends 40,000 on Google Ads and 10,000 on Meta: a mix of 80% and 20% (40,000 ÷ 50,000; 10,000 ÷ 50,000). Google Ads reports a ROAS of 4.5, Meta 3.0. The shop adds 5,000 to Google Ads for a month, and Google Ads revenue rises by 12,500: a return of 12,500 ÷ 5,000 = 2.5 on the extra money.

Not to be confused with

  • Marketing mix modeling (MMM) — a statistical model that estimates how much each channel added to sales. The media mix is the split itself; MMM is one way to decide it.
  • MER — total store revenue ÷ total marketing spend. It shows whether the mix as a whole pays back, not which channel does the work.

Right and wrong readings

  • Wrong: “Google Ads returns 4.5 and Meta 3.0, so the whole budget belongs in Google.” Right: both numbers are averages of money already spent. In the example, the next 5,000 in Google Ads returned 2.5, and part of what Meta does may show up in the Google Ads report.

Sources