Guy walks into a bar. He stares worriedly at a TV screen near the ceiling. He knows his luck is running out, and his face shows how quickly it’s happening.
In this case, the scene is not about someone throwing away their life savings at a Las Vegas casino. It’s a chief marketing officer who may have blown their budget on a Super Bowl commercial without really thinking through the information they needed to measure the overall impact. Created by Adobe as part of its “Do you know what your marketing is doing?” campaign, it helps position the firm’s Marketing Cloud as a tool to more effectively purchase spots on TV and in other channels.
Adobe is not the only one counting on more CMOs to put more focus on data and reporting capabilities. According to a recent report by Results International, marketing automation software accounted for 22% of M&As in the marketing and advertising technology sector last year.
“As channels, devices and communications became more convergent in 2015 than ever before, marketers began to realise that integration and coordination were the order of the day, to allow them to deliver tailored communication in a standardised way,” a story on ExchangeWire said. “It became clear to tech platforms what needed to happen; they needed to be able to meet all of their clients’ needs. This meant one of two things: either create a fully operational, full-service stack, or an open ecosystem, to allow the missing pieces of the puzzle to be able to plug into your platform.”
There may be a lag, however, in terms of actual adoption. According to the Martech Data Report from Redwood City, Calif.-based IT/data management shop Openprise, two-thirds of marketing and sales professionals surveyed for a new report do not use a marketing automation platform (MAP). And, of the third that do, their usage is basic to moderate, with only about half of those engaging in personalization or lead nurturing.
