UK marketers face data challenges head-on with big boost to tech investment

You’ll be hard-pressed to find a marketing agency today that doesn’t call itself “data-driven”, but dig beneath the surface and the more accurate description would be “data-dazed”. As third-party cookies make a slow and unceremonious retreat from the ecosystem, marketers face a bewildering array of options to make up for the resulting shortfall in audience targeting and insights.

To understand more about the state of data in the UK marketing sector, Lotame recently surveyed marketers and agencies on the data challenges that face them, as well as what they’re doing to solve those issues. Let’s take a look at what they told us, and what this means for the future of the industry and its relationship with the other end of the supply chain.
 

The data struggle is real & ubiquitous

Nearly all UK marketers and agencies (97%) admit to hitting roadblocks with their data strategies. The biggest issue? Finding trustworthy data partners and trying to stretch the limited insights that first-party data can offer on its own.

On the one hand, first-party data is high on marketers’ priority list, with 68% keen to gather and activate it for more targeted campaigns. But, on the other, most of this data comes in the form of shaky identifiers like emails and mobile IDs, making it difficult to piece together a complete picture of their audience. 

Then there’s the cookie-shaped elephant in the room. A significant chunk of UK marketers (36%) and agencies (22%) are still entirely dependent on third-party cookies to fuel campaign strategy and targeting, despite their increasing obsolescence and the shrinking pool of audiences they represent.

The good news is that a multi-identity approach is emerging to fill this addressability gap, with marketers deploying three different identity solutions simultaneously. However, robust identity resolution and graphing capabilities will be needed for this portfolio approach to succeed.

With UK marketers juggling so many data challenges, it’s no wonder that some are rethinking their programmatic spending. Over half of marketers (55%) and almost two-fifths (39%) of agencies expect to dial back on programmatic investments. The split, however, is interesting: budgets are almost evenly divided between walled gardens and open web placements, despite walled gardens being seen as a more effective route to grabbing user attention.
 

Marketers are betting big on tech investment

To tackle these stubborn data challenges, UK marketers are gearing up for a fresh wave of technology upgrades. Almost every marketer (99%) has their sights set on purchasing new marketing technology in the near future, with 96% planning to adopt new data tools specifically.

This surge in tech investment shows that marketers are not resting on their laurels, are willing to put their money where their mouth is to up their data-driven capabilities, and are confident that there are solutions in the market that will get them there.

Among these solutions, data collaboration platforms (DCPs) have risen from a newcomer in the data space to a favourite in UK marketers’ technology shopping list. These platforms allow brands to pool insights with other trusted partners (as well as break down internal data silos) creating broader and more detailed audience profiles.

This collaborative approach is paying off for marketers and agencies who have already gone hands-on with DCPs:

• 45% have improved their audience targeting through a more comprehensive view of consumers
• 45% have expanded their reach by unlocking new audience segments through cross-organisation collaboration
• 43% have enhanced the personalisation of their campaigns thanks to enriched data sets
• 41% have had their privacy concerns around data sharing mitigated due to privacy-by-design principles
• 35% have achieved better attribution modelling by integrating data across the customer journey

On the other end of the scale, there are signs that data clean rooms, once the darling of the privacy-first data sharing world, are falling out of favour. Issues such as limited functionality, complicated setup, and a high level of technical expertise required to utilise clean rooms effectively, are leading marketers and agencies to question their value. Adoption is high currently, with three in four marketers and agencies using clean rooms, but more are planning to phase them out than bring them in.
 

Curation gives marketers the push they need to organise their data

Programmatic curation provides a carrot on a stick for marketers to get their data strategy in shape. It resolves growing frustrations with patchwork approaches to cookie-free targeting and the lack of transparency in open auctions by pairing high-quality data from trusted sources with equally high-quality inventory to deliver high-performing campaign outcomes.

Instead of wading through an ocean of supply, marketers can leverage their audience data - and that of their partners - to take a more deliberate approach, selecting and optimising placements on a bespoke basis to align with brand objectives. This tailored strategy cuts through programmatic clutter, bringing greater control, efficiency, and transparency to audience selection and ad buying.

As the volume of audiences reachable via third-party cookies dwindles, programmatic curation offers an out for the significant number of marketers who remain cookie-reliant by allowing them to switch to and leverage privacy-friendly identifiers and first-party data. And for those seeking to bridge the “addressability gap,” curation will enable campaigns to reach target audiences without leaning on fragile identifiers or living at the mercy of what signals DSPs will or will not accept.

Beyond precision, programmatic curation boosts efficiency. By trimming the number of placements and intermediaries, curation streamlines operations, making programmatic campaigns more effective and far less cumbersome to manage.
 

With collaborative technology comes a collaborative mindset

Deep-rooted data-driven challenges and the technology required to overcome them are pushing UK marketers to rethink their approach. Gone are the days when each brand could survive as its own mini walled garden of proprietary data; the industry is now realising that teamwork does, in fact, make the dream work. Marketers, brands, and media owners are proving that working together can lead to smarter strategies, better targeting, and more effective campaigns - all to the consumer’s benefit.