According to Emarketer, global ad spending surpassed $1 trillion for the first time ever last year, growing at a rate of 9.5%. That growth is expected to continue in 2025, with digital platforms capturing 72.9% of total ad revenues this year, rising to 76.8% by 2029.
The ROI on digital marketing efforts continues to justify this growth in spending. At the same time, maintaining that ROI requires marketers to enhance their efforts to cut through the growing digital noise to connect with the right audiences in an omnichannel reality. According to McKinsey, 72% of consumers expect the businesses they buy from to recognize them as individuals and know their interests. That’s no small task, but it is achievable with the right data strategy and partners.
Let’s look at the top data pain points marketers face in the current consumer and privacy landscape. Together, these data requirements represent a marketer’s core checklist for vetting data partners in today’s fragmented, privacy-first digital ecosystem.
Pain point 1: Limited availability of quality data
Limited access to high-quality data sets makes it difficult to gather insights on target audiences and measure and analyze campaign effectiveness. Without access to varied and high-quality data, identifying new customers and market opportunities is throttled, ultimately resulting in suboptimal targeting and engagement strategies.
At the same time, ensuring the consistency and reliability of data sourced from multiple providers is a major obstacle. Today’s marketers face difficulties when integrating data from multiple sources due to varying formats, standards and quality levels. This complexity results in a time-consuming process to normalize data that is also fraught with inconsistencies and gaps.
What’s needed: Marketers should look for data partners who provide access to enriched and diverse data sets and ensure data quality by maintaining a rigorous quality assurance process. These data sets should offer comprehensive insights into customer behavior, market trends and competitive landscapes.
Ideal data partners must prove a commitment to data quality across the B2B and B2C landscapes. These partners should be able to demonstrate a history of data expertise, as well as a commitment to responsible, transparent data-processing practices.
Pain point 2: Data silos, gaps and limited multichannel reach
Even when marketers source high-quality data, stitching assets together for a true 360-degree view of consumers is hard. Siloed data makes it difficult to build a comprehensive unified view of customers, and fragmented data sources contribute to inefficient workflows when attempting to reconcile disparate data sets. Overall, this hampers the ability to develop cohesive and effective strategies.
At the same time, identity resolution poses a tremendous hurdle for marketers in the wake of so much signal deprecation. As reliance on third-party cookies goes away and consumer identities become more fragmented, marketers must adapt to new identifiers while respecting privacy sensitivities.
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In addition, the seamless and efficient merging of various disparate B2B, B2C and B2B2C data assets – as well as online and offline data – remains a challenge. The failure to consolidate this data into customer profiles results in a siloed, piecemeal understanding of customers reducing the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
What’s needed: Marketers need data partners capable of creating a holistic, 360-degree view of the customer by merging diverse data types, including B2B, B2C and B2B2C data curated for privacy concerns. This comprehensive data integration merges of various data sets, eliminating inefficiencies and providing a unified customer profile.
For example, with D&B Consumer Intelligence, we are enhancing our person-level data across both business and consumer personas, while maintaining a focus on responsible data processing and transparency.
This 360-degree view of customers enables the deployment of consistent, scaled marketing campaigns. They are also person-centric and enriched with identity and attribute data, which unlocks new personalization opportunities. How do we do this? We append identity to enrich consumer data so that marketers can directly measure and improve ROI. By using our bi-directional identity graph between digital and offline data, we power true omnichannel programs.
Pain point 3: Compliance with data privacy regulations
We need to talk about the elephant in the room: privacy. The challenges associated with navigating complex and evolving privacy and data protection laws, such as GDPR and CCPA, can limit data usage and targeting capabilities. At the same time, marketers are being tasked with implementing cookieless targeting solutions that comply with these regulations while still maintaining effectiveness. It’s not easy, and the stakes are high.
What’s needed: Navigating complex and evolving data privacy regulations requires a data partner that prioritizes compliance and data accuracy. If you want to know which data partners are committed to navigating future privacy shifts, look for ones that have already proven their commitment during landmark shifts like the EU and UK GDPR and the 20 US state consumer privacy laws already adopted, with more soon to come.
It’s crucial to seek partners that have access to tools that provide precise identity resolution without reliance on cookies, enabling effective targeting while reducing risks to consumer privacy by providing transparency, respecting data subject rights and demonstrating accountability through recognized certification programs.
Additionally, the use of unique identifiers, like the D-U-N-S Number for business data linkage, ensures precision and compliance in identity resolution. This approach helps marketers maintain consumer trust while executing effective campaigns.
As the digital landscape continues to evolve, the ability to harness the right insights has never been more critical. Marketers who proactively adapt to the challenges of data quality, integration and privacy compliance will not only navigate the complexities of today’s market but also position themselves for long-term success.
