The Truth Behind Data-Driven Fiction
While 92% of marketers claim to be data-driven, less than a third optimize advertising investments in real-time.
New York [October 2019] – Despite the perceptions from data-driven marketers, the majority of businesses aren’t ready for real-time. Whilst 92% of senior marketers identify their organization as being data-driven, less than a third are actually using data to optimize their advertising in-flight. Furthermore, 70% of marketers have indicated that it will be between one and five years before they can embrace real-time optimization.
“It is no longer enough to just have all the right data sets; marketers must be able to use them” said Stephen Upstone, CEO of LoopMe. “Our research shows that many marketers have the data they need but aren’t currently leveraging this data in real-time”.
LoopMe’s research illustrates how marketers obtain and rely on various sources of data for advertising. Financial (64%), location (63%) and behavioral (53%) data are among the most popular types used by marketers. Despite the popularity, only 37% of US marketers are able to understand which type of data is most effective for each campaign objective. Whilst this is clearly problematic for marketers, one in three said they need another year to fully comprehend the relationship between data and campaign objectives.
More surprisingly, although 94% of marketers having access to sales data, almost a third of them are not using it to inform their marketing decisions.
Interviews were conducted with more than 400 senior-level marketing executives worldwide by Sapio Research on behalf of LoopMe.
“Given that businesses are constantly seeking to validate returns from their marketing, companies need to be truly data-driven, not just data-informed.” said Upstone. “Data-driven marketers must be able to use all available data to adjust marketing activity continuously and programmatically.”.
These findings form part of LoopMe’s wider research into data usage, attribution, analytics and measurement.
About the research
LoopMe and Sapio Research received 400 responses (200 U.S.A, 200 UK) from marketers working across a range of verticals, including financial, retail, FMCG, automotive and travel industries working in companies with more than 100 employees and more than $499,999 in gross revenue.The survey represents a range of responses across different levels of management: managers, directors, VP/SVPs and C-suite.