How important a MM is compared to a tournament set differs not only from person to person, but from player to player (Some people would rather MM for $100 instead of getting 2nd-3rd at a tournament and make $100, while others want the satisfaction in knowing they beat people/placed well in a tournament setting).
For Ally, I personally think there is a difference between MM's and tournament sets, and that for at least him we cannot consider them as near equal worth.
Ally tries hard in tournament. He goes there not just to win money, but to WIN the tournament. If we wants a good shot at winning, he most likely would try to avoid fatiguing himself by playing too much or playing too intensely. Think about when he MM's people; he usually does it before tournament and he's usually more or less forced into MMing a large amount of people. Even if he is having to do MM's for $20 or larger, I don't think he is going to go into a MM with the same mindset that he would have in tournament, at least not once you get past 17th place or so in tournament where things start to really get serious.
Even if he wanted to, it's hard for a lot of players to treat MM's with the same mindset as an important tournament set. It's generally easier to go into a tournament setting with the mindset that "I have to win this" compared to a MM (especially the ones he usually does, $20 or less).
Now personally I do try pretty hard to win in MM's, and I can get away with playing at peak performance/playing really intense simply because I don't do many MM's and playing really hard for a set or two outside of tournament generally isn't enough to hinder me drastically once the tournament starts, but it's rare for Ally to MM less that 10-15, even 20+ people before a tournament starts.
So for him, I do think that his MM sets count less than his tournament sets, but with most things you have to consider all the aspects surrounding his Set and judge whether you think it counts as much as a tournament set. This evaluation naturally will differ from person to person concerning the same subject, and with different subjects it's reasonable to assume that evaluations will differ slightly with each different person.