[morley]

$2bn is their entire marketing spend, so it includes media buying, creative, in-store displays, PR, research, and anything else involved in the marketing mix.

FTA:

> The confectionery giant, home to brands like Reese’s and Skinny Pop, is working with the analytics platforms Mutinex and Tracer to automate marketing mix modeling — a statistical technique that measures how media spending and other variables drive sales — making it faster and more frequent.

So this system doesn't cost $2bn, it goes into the decision-making of where to spend the $2bn.

I agree that when you have a $2bn budget, it's hard to fathom tolerating a 6-mo analytics lead time, but I'm sure it's not alone, and I'm sure that's why this vendor lobbied Ad Age to cover this project.