Zachary Combs

About Zachary Combs

I help organizations build the measurement capability to make their most important investment decisions with confidence. Over 10+ years, I\'ve led data science teams, architected measurement frameworks, and delivered advanced analytics solutions — MTA, Bayesian attribution, causal inference — that connect media and marketing investment to revenue growth, CAC efficiency, CLV, and long-term business outcomes.At Merkle (dentsu), I lead a globally distributed analytics team that delivers advanced measurement solutions across the retail, finance, and healthcare verticals. I\'m also actively exploring the role of agentic AI in marketing analytics — including applications in data processing, exploratory data analysis, attribution modeling, and measurement automation. This has informed my work building toward an intelligent, platform-based measurement solution designed for the analytics and business analyst persona: streamlined, interpretable, and built for strategic decision-making at scale.Earlier in my career at Impact.com, I operated at the intersection of product and engineering in a high-growth, agile environment — contributing to the development of platform-based measurement and analytics products, and building out an internal analytics organization in close collaboration with executive leadership. That experience gave me a strong foundation for translating business needs into scalable data science solutions while moving fast without sacrificing rigor.I bring a bias for action, a systems-level view of business problems, and a genuine belief that the best measurement work doesn\'t just report on the past — it shapes what happens · MTA · Bayesian Regression · Causal Inference · Incrementality · Budget Optimization · Forecasting · Agentic AI · Databricks · Snowflake · AWS · GCP · Python · R · SQL

Experience

1. Director of Analytics

   Merkle

   Oct 2022 — Present · Columbia, MD, US

   Leading a globally distributed data science team delivering Marketing Mix Modeling Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA), and Bayesian attribution solutions across retail, finance, and healthcare verticals — building measurement frameworks that connect media investment to full-funnel business outcomes, including revenue growth, CAC efficiency, CLV, and ROAS.Key focus areas:Measurement Science — Applying causal inference methodology, incrementality frameworks, and Bayesian modeling to isolate true channel contribution and guide strategic budget allocation decisions for clients across multiple industry verticals.Platform Development — Architecting a modular, platform-based measurement solution designed for the analytics and business analyst persona — bringing scenario planning, budget optimization, and intelligent model specification into a streamlined, client-facing experience.Agentic AI Applications — Exploring and implementing agentic AI workflows in marketing analytics, including applications in data processing, exploratory data analysis, and measurement automation — building toward more intelligent, scalable analytics infrastructure.Data Governance — Leading enterprise data governance initiative encompassing access controls, data classification, lineage tracking, and retention policies across globally distributed teams.Team Leadership — Building technical culture, analytical standards, and career development frameworks for a high-performing globally distributed team.

Education

• University of South Dakota

  Master of Business Administration - MBA, Business Administration and Management, General

• South Dakota State University

  Master of Science (MS), Data Science

  2014 — 2015

• University of California, Berkeley

  Bachelor's degree, Psychology

  2006 — 2009

Skills

• Public Speaking
• Predictive Modeling
• Apache Spark
• Microsoft Excel
• Survival Analysis
• Machine Learning
• Microsoft Off
• Mysql
• Data Mining
• Analysis
• Microsoft Office
• Microsoft Sql Server
• Python
• Latex
• Big Data Analytics
• Statistics
• Business Intelligence
• Statistical Modeling
• Time Series Analysis
• Sentiment Analysis
• Weka
• Dashboard
• Html
• Statistical Programming
• Consulting
• Apis
• Digital Marketing
• Sql
• Linux
• Hadoop
• Unstructured Data
• Sas Programming
• Sqlite
• R
• Data Visualization
• Data Analysis
• Data Collection
• Css