Do we still need data driven marketing?

Five to ten years ago, we won pitches because we were the best analysts and mathematicians, able to analyze data quicker and more meaningfully than our competitors. This allowed us to make decisions that led our clients to success. We retained clients by continually improving and accelerating that cycle. We used data analysis to optimize targeting, audiences, bidding, placements, formats—the possibilities were endless. Our ability to quickly crunch data in the right direction gave us the edge. People recommended us, saying, “This team is good; they use data.”

But that was five to ten years ago. The ecosystem, algorithms, and expectations have changed. We had to adopt new vocabulary: “automated,” “machine learning,” “neural networks,” and now “AI.” These advancements have dulled, then destroyed, our edge. Today, we can’t claim to compete against automated, intelligent systems analyzing billions of data points every millisecond. Moreover, these tools, techniques, and methods are now available to anyone. They’re not hidden; they are the default options when launching a campaign on any platform. Names like Pmax, Dynamic Ads, and Advanced Shopping Campaigns are familiar to everyone in the industry.

Two years ago, in a meeting, a client was surprised that most of our campaign settings were automated. Someone on their team half-jokingly asked me, “So do we still need you?” It was a genuine question: were we actually disrupted? Do we close shop? Let go of our top analysts, replace them with AI clerks to upload images and videos? Is data-driven growth dead? No—we don’t—because data-driven marketing isn’t dead. It’s transformed, and in a good way. That analysis was our edge, but it was tedious, repetitive, and bound to become a commodity. We simply shift the edge and apply it elsewhere—somewhere we can have a clear-cut impact:

1. Deeply understanding the nuances, shortcomings, and limits of the new ad products to improve their inputs and hack their outputs.

a. Instead of simply abandoning control to the platform, we initiate discussions with them to request amendments needed to improve the algorithms.

b. We’ve tricked the algorithms by pushing individual margin numbers instead of revenue numbers, forcing them to optimize on margin rather than revenue.

c. We take more time to analyze the proprietary data—the first-party gold mines that allow for more structured long-term strategies instead of short-term tactical wins.

d. We focus more on product feeds that are at the heart of the automation wave of new ads. Building a dynamic, robust, and rich feed is the most underappreciated differentiating factor for e-commerce owners today.

e. The multi-campaign, multi-platform optimization techniques and methodologies we use are now not only more advanced but also more frequent as we have more bandwidth to do so. We’ve developed AcquiTech, an internal software tool that helps us do this in record time for complex clients (multi-country, multi-brand, multi-channel, multi-product).

2. Spending more time after the click to focus on using our analysis and data-driven methods on CRO and CRM.

a. After driving traffic, most of our competitors push the responsibility onto the client. We do not; our objective is to make our clients grow. That’s why increasing the conversion rate and improving their customers’ lifetime value via CRM is now fully within our scope. The great news is that everything we’ve learned and all of our analytical horsepower are fully applicable to both CR optimization and CRM optimization. Improving CR by 20% is as good or better than improving ads ROI by 20%, and the same goes for LTV.

b. This also translates to our teams; our experts leading the way on CRO and CRM today have forged their initial experiences in the pre-disrupted performance landscape. They have built methods and knowledge that fully translate now into their new scopes.

So the answer is yes—we still need data-driven marketing; we will always need it. It’s just not the same one that is needed anymore. And hopefully, what we’re still currently doing manually will be automated tomorrow, so we can focus on other key growth areas. Put your seatbelt on; the ride is not over.