Dec 29, 2025
Build or buy? Why more marketing leaders choose Paramark over DIY measurement
Pranav Piyush
,
Co-founder, CEO
Connect with Pranav
Building an internal measurement framework is slower, riskier and more expensive. Don’t DIY your way into confusion. Choose the path to clarity, instead.
"Can't we build this ourselves?”
It's a fair question. You've got smart people. Open-source MMM libraries exist. How hard could it be?
We've seen a dozen companies try. Here's what actually happens:
Month 1–3: Your senior data scientist disappears into research papers on Bayesian modeling.
Month 4–6: You're debugging data pipelines instead of running experiments.
Month 7–9: Your first model results conflict with platform metrics. Nobody trusts either.
Month 10–12: Your data scientist quits for a $50K raise at a FAANG company. You're back to square one.
Total cost? A lot. Total insight? Minimal.
This is the pattern we see when marketing teams try to DIY robust, modern measurement. Most leading marketers don’t choose this harder path just because they can do it in-house.
Paramark is the platform that accelerates you directly down the road to clarity. Our method is rooted in proven science, designed for speed and customization, and we offer human guidance every step of the way.
We combine incrementality testing, Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) and a hands-on growth advisory team to give you a full picture of your marketing impact, customized for your business and within weeks.
Here’s a brief breakdown of how Paramark gets you to understanding, action and confidence — faster — without the burden of building DIY.
Lower total cost of ownership
Building a robust Paramark-level capability (MMM, testing and human expertise) is not a one-time sprint. It’s an ongoing operational commitment that grows heavier over time. When we see teams build this themselves, the combined cost of salaries, time spent building and months of missed lessons adds up to at least 5% of your marketing budget.
The reality of DIY:
Multi-team cost: Requires ongoing investment across data scientists (100%), marketing analytics (100%) and data engineers (50%).
Rigor overhead: Needs steady human hours for experiment design and continual checks on scientific validity to trust results.
Infra burden: Needs engineering time to build, support, and maintain the underlying pipelines and tooling.
Low payoff: High organizational lift for limited long-term return.
Paramark reduces your spend and overall cost:
We replace a multi-person, multi-discipline internal effort with a single platform and methodology. Our pricing is flexible, predictable and designed to de-risk your decision, not add more overhead.
Find value, faster
Standing up a robust internal testing capability and MMM competencies will take quarters, if not years. Your next budget proposal can’t wait.
The reality of DIY:
Methodology lift: You’ll need to first learn the core approach, then build pipelines and clean and prep historical data to make it usable.
Experimentation set-up: DIY means owning experiment design end-to-end: picking target metrics, setting success criteria and building forecasting models.
Alignment time: Expect non-trivial time coordinating across marketing, engineering, data analytics and other stakeholders to agree on goals and execution.
Ongoing maintenance: Once it’s built, you’re responsible for keeping data, models and processes up to date as the business changes.
Paramark gives you insight in weeks:
Our platform is built so you start seeing value early, usually within your first four weeks. For leading marketers, momentum is everything. The faster you learn, the faster you confidently lead the team toward the next endeavor.
Free your team to do their best work
Your team is already carrying a lot. Don’t let work that moves the business forward get replaced by work that simply keeps the lights on.
The reality of DIY:
When models break or dashboards don’t add up, your most strategic people turn into:
Data janitors
Integration repair crews
Attribution debuggers
In-house statisticians
Manual forecasters
That’s how high-impact work gets sidelined: new channel exploration, LTV analysis, experimentation ideas, creative innovation.
Paramark gives teams their time, energy and strategic momentum back:
A motivated team doesn’t want to clean up data or debate attribution. They want to push boundaries. Paramark gives them the freedom to do that.
Unlock continuous innovation
Internally-built tests and measurement stacks often stand still once constructed. Paramark is constantly keeping pace with market expectations.
The reality of DIY:
The marketing landscape is shifting faster than ever. Privacy changes, offline channels surging back, creative and AI platforms evolving weekly. Plus, there’s the pressure on marketing leaders to prove every dollar.
Keeping pace with your measurement requires constant rethinking and rebuilding. It’s impossible for anyone to keep up.
Paramark keeps you current with learnings from dozens of teams:
You get what we’ve already paid to learn. We’ve analyzed billions in spend across a variety of industries and five continents. Every insight, improvement, and breakthrough we get compounds into the platform. With Paramark, you don’t have to fight the frontier alone. You get the map as it’s being drawn.
Forgo internal bias with a neutral measurement partner
Doing this yourself comes with invisible internal bias. People don’t mean to, but teams see what they want to see.
The reality of DIY:
Channel owner bias: Channel owners naturally want their channel to win, so results can get nudged (consciously or not) toward that outcome.
Credit wars: Attribution often turns political, sparking debates over “who gets credit” instead of focusing on what actually drove impact.
Narrative filtering: Experiments get interpreted through pre-existing stories or beliefs, so the data is used to confirm rather than challenge assumptions.
Paramark gives you scientific, objective truth:
Our methodology is channel-neutral, privacy-proof and statistically rigorous. We are designed to align teams, not divide them. And we’re built to withstand scrutiny from execs and the board. With Paramark, you get a trusted compass that everyone can gather around.
If you’re deciding whether or not to do modern measurement in-house, ask yourself this one question...
Why should we spend a year of the team’s time building measurement, when we can focus that same time perfecting our strategy to move the business?
Paramark gives you:
Incrementality you can defend
Forecasts you can trust
Scenario plans that move the business
Experiments that prove causality
A shared truth across marketing, finance, and leadership
Weekly and monthly updates your team can act on
DIY gives you:
Slower speed
Higher costs
Fragile models
Bias
Frustration
A team constantly reacting instead of leading
Marketing leaders deserve a measurement tool that is holistic, objective and actionable. A few years ago, that didn’t exist - so we built Paramark.Your team deserves a clear roadmap to impact. Paramark gives you the ready-made scientific foundation to lead with confidence.
