Coca-Cola and its partners are launching a new measurement framework, Universal Media Measurement (UMM), to help marketers compare the effectiveness of paid, owned, earned, and shared media with a single metric.
The framework was developed in collaboration between The Coca-Cola Company, Top Line Marketing, and Kantar. The tool was launched at the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) Media Forum in Stockholm last month, indicating that the effort is set for wider use in the industry. The Drum reported that UMM has been in development for seven years and is already being used by Coca-Cola advertisers in more than 20 countries.
All you have to do is MM
UMM’s website says the tool is designed to “put all media under a common language and measurement system,” so marketers can compare consumer touch points under the same basic criteria. The site says UMM imports data from paid, owned, earned, and shared media, and provides a dashboard with comparable quality ratings across online and offline channels.
The site also states that outputs include impact analysis, quality ratings, and cost-to-impact ratio. The goal of this program is to help advertisers evaluate media options using a common currency rather than separate metrics for each channel. It seeks to provide a common currency that allows online and offline consumer touchpoints to be compared and reported side by side.
Why Coca-Cola says it matters
The pitch comes at a time when marketers are managing more diverse media plans than ever before, with money spread across TV, retail media, social media, packaging, sponsorships, and other touchpoints. That makes it difficult to compare media apples to apples.
Only 32% of marketers worldwide say they measure media usage across all digital and traditional channels, according to Nielsen’s “2025 Marketing Year.” Nielsen also found that the top challenges in measuring ROI include aligning stakeholders across key metrics, inconsistent data, multiple data, unclear KPIs, multiple vendors and tools, and siled internal teams.
The same problem can be seen in other parts of marketing. The Content Marketing Institute’s 2025 report “B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends” found that 56% of B2B marketers struggle to see ROI related to content efforts, and 56% also struggle to track the customer journey. In manufacturing, that rises to 64%, according to the report.
Capgemini’s 2025 study adds another wrinkle: the company said that 39% of metrics used by marketers today are “less meaningful,” often tied to specific indicators like impressions and reach rather than business results, and only 42% of marketing leaders say they have the right metrics to measure long-term value.
What marketers should watch next
One thing that remains unclear is the underlying model of UMM discovery. The website presents it as a shared framework, but does not clearly state whether the tool is offered as a paid product, an open framework, a licensed service, or something else entirely. We reached out for more information about the release and acquisition model, but there was no response.
Community resources suggest that the UMM is designed to complement, not replace, existing measurement tools and models. That makes it look less like a stand-alone platform and more like an additional layer that can sit on top of the current planning and measurement infrastructure.
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The big question is whether UMM becomes a widely accepted organizational standard or remains a measurement model led by Coca-Cola that other marketers can learn but cannot easily replicate.
If it gains traction, it could be part of a broader shift toward cross-channel measurement systems that aim to integrate planning, reporting, and budgeting. If not, it can still serve as a useful example of how big brands think about the problem of balancing different media.
