Data collection and analytics are top-of-mind for most marketers around the world, but the barriers to adoption are stiff. Here at home, there’s a significant gap between the number of marketers who say analytics are valuable to their business and the number that are actually using it.
There’s still a sizeable percentage of CMOs that don’t even have a say in the technology choices being made.
Maggie fox, SAP
That’s the latest finding from Marketing’s annual programmatic and digital media research report, commissioned by Acuity Ads. The survey of 522 Canadian marketers found that 91% of marketers believe data collection and analytics are “important’ to their digital marketing campaigns, and 57% believe they are “very important.”
But only 48% say that, to the best of their knowledge, their brand has used data collection and analytics in the past three months. That figure is roughly the same for junior marketers, middle management and CMOs.
The results suggest that a substantial number of Canadian marketers know analytics tools are valuable, but haven’t yet integrated them into their regular marketing operations.
Maggie Fox is a well-known industry veteran who works as a global senior vice-president at SAP, a technology firm that provides data analytics services to marketers and other businesses. Fox also sat on Marketing and Acuity’s chief marketer advisory panel for the study. She says the adoption gap isn’t about the availability of data, but about “deriving insight and meaning from the data.”
“Do you have the right analytics tools for the business? Do you have appropriate software to visualize it? The data can tell you something, but if you, as a layperson, can’t understand it, it’s meaningless. And are you getting it in time? I don’t really want to know what the data tells me about last quarter – I want to know what it tells me about last week, yesterday, and when we get into predictive, the future.”
Fox pointed to several key barriers preventing Canadian businesses from finding the right tools. For one, setting up an effective analytics program requires the right people with the right skills, which are in short supply in the Canadian market.
And in many cases, CMOs – who would benefit the most from analytics tools – don’t have the power or budget within their organization to make the right decisions about handling data.
“There’s this battle between the CIO and the CMO in some cases over who gets to choose the technology. There’s still a sizeable percentage of CMOs that don’t even have a say in the technology choices being made,” says Fox.
“Marketers need to realize they need to become more technically savvy, and take a greater role. And they can have a seat at the big table if they do – they can become a really strategic part of the business.”
Not just for the big guys
The survey found that marketers at companies with more than $250 million in annual revenue are more likely to find analytics useful, with 96% believing that they’re “important” to marketing campaigns (in fact 70% said they’re “very important”). They’re also more likely to have used them in the last three months, with 60% of respondents saying they have. But the gap is still present.
Fox says it’s not fair to say big businesses have it easier when it comes to adopting analytics. There are technology options catering toward small and medium-sized businesses, and there is usually enough data to glean at least some useful insights.
“This isn’t a million-dollar experience necessarily, there’s a lot of stuff that is downloadable, affordable, easy for a small business to use. But they have to focus on it, and decide it’s important,” she says. “I think the barriers are their own distractions – when you’re in a smaller company you tend to wear more hats, whereas a larger company can be more specialized.”
In some aspects of digital advertising, like programmatic, smaller marketers have found it easier to adopt new technology, since they are more flexible and have fewer people to train.
Marketing also polled 116 individuals that worked for agencies for the survey. Suprisingly, the numbers about data analytics were very similar to those about marketers — 95% of agency employees say analytics are at least somewhat important to their digital campaigns, but only 60% have used it in the past three months. Although agencies are slightly ahead, the idea that agencies make ubiquitous use of data insights appears to be exaggerated. It may be up to marketers to push that agenda forward.
To learn what Canadian marketers have to say about digital media and programmatic advertising, be sure to attend Marketing’s Audience Intelligence conference on Nov. 4.
