What MMM Data Is Telling Us About Google, Meta, and Where to Spend Next

For as long as I can remember in digital marketing, there was only one table worth sitting at in the performance marketing cafeteria when considering budget allocation.

Google was Regina George. Undeniably powerful, a little intimidating, and everyone was trying to get her attention. Meta was maybe Gretchen Wieners, desperate to be seen as equally essential, and for a long time, she was.

And if you were a new platform trying to break in? TikTok, Reddit, SnapChat? The message was clear: “You can’t sit with us.“

Brand safety concerns. Unproven ROI. Audiences that “weren’t quite right.” For years, the digital marketing cafeteria had a very strict seating chart. Google and Meta told brands where to spend, and brands, agency partners, and in-house teams happily obliged. It was working. Why mess with the popular table?

But this isn’t 2018. And the digital cafeteria has changed significantly.

On Wednesdays We Spend on Meta

There’s a phrase I’ve heard in nearly every client meeting at some point in my career. It usually comes from someone smart and very experienced when talking budget allocation. And it goes something like this: “It’s working. Don’t move it.” (Come on admit it, you’ve heard this yourself when a new platform came onto the scene).

I understand the instinct. When a channel performs, protecting it feels responsible for the brand. But there’s a real difference between a strategic choice and a habit wearing a strategy’s clothes. Meta became the default because teams stopped making a deliberate decision. “On Wednesdays we wear pink.” “On budget days, we fund Meta.” Because it was what we knew.

Meta still works. For the right audiences, the right formats, and the right objectives, it absolutely still belongs in the plan with funding. But “it works” and “it’s the best use of this dollar” are two different conversations, and most teams aren’t having the second one.

Here’s Why Google Still Earns Her Seat

Before we talk about where to go next, it’s worth understanding why Google justifiably held the top of the table legitimately and still does.

Google did more than simply maintain its position. It built infrastructure. Search covered intent. Display covered reach. YouTube built brand love at scale. And then came the full-funnel products (Performance Max, Demand Gen, Shopping, etc) designed to follow a customer from “I’ve never heard of you” all the way to “take my credit card.” That product evolution matters. Our media mix modeling (MMM) analysis consistently validates it: when there’s room to grow, Google’s full-funnel coverage tends to find it first.

Which makes what’s happening to Meta’s returns even harder to ignore.

The Burn Book Nobody Kept

We would never run our businesses the way we sometimes manage our media mix.

Think about product development. Your sales team, your hiring, your competitive strategy. We constantly ask whether what’s working today will still work tomorrow. We test. We iterate. We accept that yesterday’s great idea can go out of style.

But in marketing? The channel that performs typically becomes untouchable. Nobody’s really keeping a burn book on the platforms that quietly shifted underneath us with rising CPMs, aging demographics, and plateauing returns, because that would mean admitting the table we’ve been sitting at might not be the right one anymore. It is hard work to make new friends, right?

Here’s what’s been sitting in our burn book: the MMM data.

We’ve been running media mix modeling analyses across a growing number of our clients, and the pattern is consistent. The room for growth keeps pointing in the same direction: Google first, then the platforms everyone said you couldn’t sit with. The marginal return on incremental spend in saturated channels has a ceiling. In many cases, we’re already maxing out funding to return ratios in Meta. Meanwhile, dollars tested against emerging platforms are showing more headroom and return than clients expected, especially for awareness channels.

There’s a New Table, and It’s More Interesting Anyway

So where does the growth come from?

For many of our clients, test after test, the answer has been somewhere we weren’t fully expecting. TikTok, Reddit, and channels most brands are still figuring out whether to invest in or not have consistently risen to the top. Turns out, the authentic engagement and incremental reach is just what we’d been missing.

The new table is where real conversations are happening. TikTok found a way to make content feel human and relatable, even when the algorithm is doing the heavy lifting. Reddit communities are full of people who actually want to talk about the things they care about and have a very strict code of conduct for doing so.

These platforms weren’t invited to sit with the Plastics. So they built their own table and it’s growing.

Your demographic will age. The customer who converted beautifully on Facebook in 2018 is still there and still valuable. But the customer who will be your best buyer in 2030 didn’t grow up on Facebook, and if you wait until your numbers start slipping to start building presence where they are, you’ll have a lot of catching up to do. These platforms require skill, finesse, and authenticity that can’t be manufactured overnight.

Find Your Table

If you are only in Google, or only in Google plus Meta, what happens in two years when your audience has branched out or matured and you have zero presence where they are digitally? You don’t get to shortcut your way into platform fluency. You cannot manufacture authenticity on a channel you’ve never touched, without risking brand reputation.

I’m not saying Meta disappears from your plan. I’m saying that never looking past it to notice how the room has changed is how you end up like The Plastics in the end: irrelevant.

Take a minute during your next planning session to really look at your table and notice options you might not have considered before with your team and your clients. Some of them are more interesting. Some of them have better conversations and return for your investment.

The cool kids table will always exist. But as your digital friend, I’m begging you to find a new table. I promise you’ll survive, if not thrive.