- Yeimy Garcia-Smith
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
At Cannes Lions 2026, Christine Turner, managing director of global product solutions for Google ads and measurement, sat down with Circana's Yeimy Garcia Smith, senior VP of global measurement strategy, to explain why that era is ending, and why causal measurement is becoming the standard for how marketers plan and grow.
Here is a preview of the conversation. Watch the full interview for the complete picture.
From correlation to causation
The shift Turner describes is fundamental. Correlation tells you two things moved together. Causation tells you which action actually drove the result. That distinction changes everything about how budgets get set and defended.
Marketing mix modeling (MMM) sits at the center of the move. The discipline is no longer confined to large CPG brands in the U.S. Mid-market marketers are adopting it, and the practice is spreading across categories and geographies. The reason is straightforward: when every dollar is scrutinized, guessing is no longer good enough.
Why Google Meridian matters
Google Meridian is the company's open-source MMM tool, and its adoption tells its own story. Meridian has seen a 4x increase in adoption over the past 12 months, signaling a massive industry shift toward transparent, open-source measurement.
Open source is the point, not a footnote. By putting the model in the open, Google invites the industry into a shared conversation about method and best practice. That transparency builds trust in a category where black-box measurement has long bred skepticism. But a model is only a starting point. What it produces depends entirely on the quality of the data feeding it and the rigor applied to interpreting the results.
Calibration is where models earn trust
A model without real-world grounding is a hypothesis. Calibration turns it into evidence.
This is where experiments matter. Circana and Google have run thousands of experiments on YouTube to calibrate models against actual outcomes, refining accuracy and surfacing investment opportunities. As an example, a beer and beverage marketer used YouTube reach and frequency data inside its MMM to sharpen planning and optimization decisions.
The lesson for practitioners is direct. Feed the model verified signals, calibrate against controlled experiments, and the output shifts from plausible to dependable.
Triangulation prevents conflicting answers
One measurement tool rarely tells the whole truth. Run three, and you may get three different numbers. That inconsistency erodes confidence and stalls decisions.
Triangulation solves this by unifying disparate solutions into one coherent view. MMM, experiments, and attribution each answer a different question. Read together, and reconciled properly, they produce a single, defensible story rather than competing ones. The goal is not more dashboards. It is fewer arguments about which number to believe.
The role of independent validation
Turner is candid about why third-party measurement matters, even for a company with Google's own tools.
"We will go so much farther, faster, with our joint customers. When we have third-party validation, it just really helps us build a story that is trustworthy." — Christine Turner
That is where Circana operates as the independent authority. With close to 20 years of MMM consulting and roughly 100,000 global benchmarks, Circana helps brands implement Meridian, integrate Google's signals such as reach, frequency, and search, calibrate with experiments, and triangulate across solutions. Independent validation is what lets a marketer trust the result and act on it.
The frontier is already visible. Causal measurement is expanding globally, reaching mid-market advertisers, and preparing for a world of agentic AI experiences where measurement has to keep pace with how people actually discover and buy. As Turner puts it:
"Continuous learning agenda is continuous measurement. That's the name of the game." — Christine Turner
Watch the conversation
The full interview covers how causal measurement is reshaping marketing decisions, what makes Meridian work in practice, and where measurement heads next.
Watch the full conversation with Christine Turner and Yeimy Garcia Smith from Cannes Lions 2026.
Ready to make your measurement causal, calibrated, and consistent? Explore Circana's measurement and marketing effectiveness solutions to see how independent validation turns models into confident decisions.
