News on Sequence Analytics

A chat about synthetic data

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 15:11:23 +0000

Neil sat down recently with John Conway of ‘ML’s Like Teen Spirit’ to talk about the possibilities and potential drawbacks of synthetic data. Includes segmenting a Christmas dinner, why Star Wars is a musical and discovering new music with an LLM.

Listen here.

Congratulations to ITV (with some Sequence help)

Wed, 26 Nov 2025 15:08:16 +0000

We were delighted to see ITV’s “Creative Boost” take bronze at the 2025 Media Week awards, particularly because alongside Lumen, Savanta and ViewersLogic, Sequence Analytics contributed to the work.

We modelled large scale single-source data to show that branded programming creates measurable business outcomes.

ITV was able to prove branded entertainment delivers up to 23% more attention than standard TV ads. The panel said it shared a “brilliant, incredibly robust piece of data to solve a very current challenge.”

Media Week

Listen to a podcast

Tue, 14 Jan 2025 12:10:15 +0000

Back in Spring 2024, just as he was launching Sequence Analytics, Neil Charles had a chat with Dan Barnett for Dan’s new ‘Data is Everywhere’ podcast. We talk MMM, football analysis, AI, how to learn analytics, selling on Etsy and starting a business.

Listen here.

How Marketing Mix Modelling Works

Sun, 20 Oct 2024 21:35:08 +0000

Launch the story →

Making Effectiveness Work

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 08:53:10 +0000

Written for the IPA by Simeon Duckworth, Neil Charles and Duncan Stoddard, ‘Making Effectiveness Work’ is a guide to advertising measurement and creating a learning culture in your organisation.

You can download the report free of charge here.

Your Brand is a Castle

Thu, 05 Sep 2024 11:06:51 +0000

What if we’ve been thinking about advertising effectiveness all wrong?

That’s a troubling thought. It’s prompted by another troubling thought - that we rarely measure advertising as being profitable in the short term. We know from large-scale studies that advertising generates more value over the long term than it does during a campaign and we should think about that value when we set marketing budgets, but why does it do that?

Five things a marketing mix model will always tell you

Fri, 26 Jan 2024 12:56:14 +0000

Why isn't your dashboard being used?

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 17:55:37 +0000

The most important chart in advertising

Fri, 24 Nov 2023 12:05:06 +0000

An update to an important study was released earlier this year, so with full credit to the original paper (which you should definitely read), let me introduce you to the most important chart in advertising…

How many of your sales are driven by advertising? Even econometrics (marketing mix modelling) can’t really tell you. Marketing mix models are very useful but they don’t know what will happen if you simply turn off all of your ads and then leave them turned off (which incidentally is why we should stop saying that econometrics - or almost any other marketing measurement technique - measures ROI).

The Stages of Marketing Measurement

Fri, 22 Sep 2023 11:11:26 +0000

When marketing measurement doesn’t work, it’s almost always because you’re trying to hold onto techniques that are best applied to businesses smaller than yours.

Borrowing techniques from larger businesses can work but trying to operate one, or even two stages back from where you should be is frustrating and expensive. Where does your business sit, and are you using the techniques that you should be?

Say 'ROI' Again

Fri, 08 Sep 2023 15:42:55 +0000

Say “ROI” again! C’mon, say “ROI” again! I dare ya, I double dare ya, say “ROI” one more goddamn time!

Anon

We need to talk about ROI.

Actually, I take that back, the term ‘ROI’ is used far too often.

We need to talk about not talking about ROI.

ROI should only mean one thing

Every marketer knows that ROI stands for ‘Return on Investment’ and it’s what we want to measure when we assess the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. That bit is easy but then things go rapidly sideways… There are short and long term ROI’s. Web sales and physical retail sales ROI. Revenue ROI and profit ROI. Or is one of those ROAS? You’ll even see the ROI label applied to metrics that have nothing to do with financial performance at all, like web traffic and brand awareness.