Advertising has a data problem. Outwardly, marketers enthuse about their ability to target consumers with precision, harnessing a wealth of data to drive them through the sales funnel and towards purchase. With every customer interaction, every ad impression, every dollar of ad spend being collated and turned into a data point, the insights available should ensure not a penny is wasted, right?

This is far from the truth. In recent years P&G, Chase, and Uber have all curtailed their digital ad spend and seen little drop in actual business outcomes. There seems to be a disconnect between the vast amount of data available to marketers and the effective insights they gain. With so many stats vying to influence the decisions being made, it’s no wonder two-thirds of CMOs are suffering from data overload.

Have we reached a point of data over-saturation? Is it time marketers started a data diet?

The truth is that much of the data that global brands hold is either siloed and hard for marketing teams to reach, possibly duplicated or full of errors, and even simply surplus to requirements. So, how can global brands start cutting down their data consumption and gain access to the insights within?

A Diet That Works: Cutting the Data Addiction

Data in global brands can often be spread across multiple systems, meaning data sets cannot be compared. Exactly what data is held and where may get lost or forgotten, while the lack of easy access leads to the creation of duplicates that further muddy the water. The taste for data that marketers have developed has not helped this. Many feel the need to collect as much information as possible about campaigns or their customers, even if there is no obvious usage at the time. This focus on future possible uses of data is clouding the insights that need to be gained from the present. Global brands should take vital steps, and change their habits, if they are to gain a clear insight into their data. 

The first move for any global brand is to perform a data audit. This is not simple, and can take up a significant amount of time and resources. Hard questions will need to be asked – what is data being held for, and why? Is the data a must-have, or a just-in-case? With an increasing number of privacy regulations affecting global brands, having an in-depth map of all data held can be vital for compliance as well as for helping to gain a clearer view on important insights.

The second step is to prioritize the needs of local teams. All marketing is local in practice, and data management must reflect this. Without clear lines of communication and a system that preserves the local language, taxonomies, and customs of each market, brands risk losing the specific insights that these teams can provide to ensure better ROI in individual markets. Top-down standardization often means the nuances of these markets are overlooked, leaving global brands with reams of data that offer fewer genuine insights compared to if they had ingested local data with its taxonomies intact. While this may not reduce the amount of data, it will certainly increase the quality of the data a global brand does keep – think of it as eating nutrient-rich vegetables instead of the empty calories of candy.

Lean, Mean, Marketing Machine

With the excess trimmed, marketers now need to have their data at their fingertips if they are to harness its full potential. Disparate data from all over the world must be in a single place that is accessible by all, while also ensuring that as few hands touch the data as possible to preserve its accuracy.

Technological solutions can provide much of the heavy lifting when it comes to data management and analysis – it’s no wonder that global spend on marketing analytics and data infrastructure is set to rapidly increase from $22 billion in 2022 to $32 billion in 2026. Tools such as data management solutions enable marketers to focus less on the ingestion and management of data, and instead provide an easily accessible platform for them to access vital insights.

However, marketers need to ensure they choose a solution that suits the workflow of their teams – and doesn’t simply have the most features. Solutions that are highly customizable and geared towards the workflows of local teams will most effectively gather and harmonize data. The goal of these solutions ultimately is to assist marketers in gaining a clearer view and finding extra value in data.

Like any diet, the key to gaining a clear view of data is consistency. It must become a habit, not a one-time crash clear-out. For too long, marketers have hoarded data, but in an ultra-competitive market and unstable macroeconomic climate, those able to rapidly gain insights from their data will find themselves in a stronger position.

Data should be a help, not a hindrance. Marketers need to focus on once again turning what they have into a valuable asset, not an unwieldy tangle of spreadsheets. It is only by going on a data diet and making good data practices a habit that advertisers can gain a unified and trusted view of their data, ultimately leading to better decision-making and improved ROI.