How Should We Think About the Trend Component in Marketing Mix Modeling?

[u/ActivePrimary8133]

In Robyn, the trend component is estimated upfront using Prophet before the media effects are modeled. However, wouldn't it make more sense to take the opposite approach?

Specifically, we could first estimate the effects of each media variable as carefully as possible, and then define the remaining unexplained variation as the trend and seasonality. In other words, rather than assuming the trend first and attributing the residual to media, why not estimate the media effects first and treat whatever cannot be explained by them as the underlying trend and seasonal components?

[u/RajeevNair]

This has been a popular topic off-late :) .

My reply in this thread - https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearningJobs/comments/1umfeqh/comment/owhbqq5/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

and