Report: Marketers Spend Equally on Third-Party Data and Activation Solutions in 2017
Marketers are dedicating a large portion of their budgets toward data, but new research shows they are also having to pay for solutions to support their investment, such as data hygiene.
Recently, Winterberry Group conducted its “The State of Data 2017” report to gauge how marketers are allocating their budget toward data and analytics. By the end of 2017, U.S. firms will have invested more than $20.1 billion on third-party audience data and activation solutions. Companies are spending almost equal shares between acquiring third-party audience data and the support solutions to leverage them effectively, such as data processing and hygiene.
Marketers are spending $3.5 billion on omnichannel data – the information used to identify customers and prospects for engagement purposes. This is followed by transactional data ($2.9 billion), which shows the purchase history of audience members/segments.
About $4.3 billion will go toward integration, processing and data hygiene by the end of year. Another $4.2 billion will be invested in hosting and management, and $1.6 billion will go toward analytics, modeling and segmentation.
B2B Marketers and Data Management
Previous research indicates that B2B marketers have struggled to maintain the quality of their data without the use of third party solutions, such as hygiene and processing.
The “B2B Lead Generation Survey” conducted by Chief Marketer found that the main data challenge for marketers is quality and standardization (72 percent). Incomplete data (60 percent) and information in separate silos (53 percent) are also primary challenges for marketers.
At the time of the survey, only 25 percent of marketers said that they performed data hygiene practices quarterly.