Coca-Cola and its partners are pitching a new measurement framework, Universal Media Measurement (UMM), to help marketers compare the effectiveness of paid, owned, earned, and shared media on a single scale.
The framework was developed through a collaboration between The Coca-Cola Company, Top Line Marketing, and Kantar. The tool was presented at a World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) Media Forum session in Stockholm last month, signaling that the effort is being positioned for broader industry use. The Drum reported that UMM has been in development for about seven years and is already being used by Coca-Cola marketers in more than 20 countries.
What UMM is supposed to do
The UMM website says that the tool is designed to “place all media under a similar language and measurement system,” so marketers can compare consumer touchpoints under the same basic criteria. The site says UMM ingests data from paid, owned, earned, and shared media, then provides a dashboard with comparable quality ratings across online and offline channels.
The site also says the output includes impact analysis, quality ratings, and an estimate of cost per impact. The system’s goal is to help marketers evaluate media choices using a common currency rather than different metrics for each channel. It wants 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 fragmented media plans than ever, with spend spread across TV, retail media, social, packaging, sponsorships, and other touchpoints. That makes it harder to compare media apples-to-apples.
Only 32% of marketers globally said they measure media spending holistically across digital and traditional channels, according to Nielsen’s “2025 Annual Marketing Report.” Nielsen also found that the top challenges in measuring ROI included stakeholder alignment across key metrics, incomparable data, too much data, unclear KPIs, too many vendors and tools, and siloed internal teams.
The same problem can be seen in other parts of marketing. The Content Marketing Institute’s 2025 “B2B Content Marketing Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends” report found that 56% of B2B marketers struggle to attribute ROI to content efforts, and 56% also struggle to track customer journeys. In manufacturing, that rises to 64%, according to the report.
Capgemini’s 2025 research adds another wrinkle: the firm said 39% of the metrics marketers use today are “less meaningful,” often tied to subjective indicators such as impressions and reach rather than business outcomes, and only 42% of marketing leaders said they have the right metrics in place to measure long-term value.
What marketers should watch next
One thing that remains unclear is the basic adoption model for UMM. The website presents it as a shared framework, but it does not clearly say whether the tool is being offered as a paid product, an open framework, a licensed service, or something else entirely. We reached out for more details on the rollout and adoption model, but there was no response.
Public materials suggest that UMM is designed to complement, not replace, existing measurement tools and models. That makes it look less like a standalone platform and more like an added layer that could sit atop current planning and measurement infrastructure.
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The biggest question is whether UMM becomes a widely adopted planning standard or remains a Coca-Cola-led measurement model that other marketers can study but not easily replicate.
If it gains traction, it could become part of a broader shift toward cross-channel measurement systems that aim to unify planning, reporting, and budget allocation. If not, it may still serve as a useful example of how large brands are thinking about the fragmented media measurement problem.
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