AI won’t work if you can’t feed it data, and it’s going hungry at many organizations.
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Marketers most often cite tools as their top pain point, but 75% of the time the real problem is disconnected data, according to a report from Hightouch.
The report, “Has Martech Failed Marketers?“, analyzed 384 conversations with marketing leaders and uncovered a disconnect between ambition and execution.
Among the findings:
- 95% of marketers struggle to find or target their audiences effectively.
- 75% of martech pain points trace back to data issues rather than the tools themselves.
- Only 10% of marketers feel they’re using AI effectively today, but 75 percent want to use AI more often and for more use cases.
- Fewer than 2% believe they’re using AI for personalization successfully, and less than 1% feel they’ve achieved one-to-one personalization.
According to Hightouch, nearly every marketer surveyed expressed excitement about generative and agentic AI, but most said their organizations are not equipped to use it confidently. The report found the core issue is data readiness. Most marketing teams are still dealing with fragmented systems and reliance on engineering support that make advanced personalization, as well as the ability to understand and act on company data, difficult to scale.
The study was conducted with marketers across B2B and B2C sectors in industries including retail, fintech, entertainment, healthcare and SaaS.
The post Data accessibility continues to stall AI adoption appeared first on MarTech.
About the author
Mike Pastore is the Head of Content & Media at Third Door Media, the publisher of the Martech and Search Engine Land websites and the producer of the SMX and MarTech Conferences. In nearly three decades in B2B marketing, Mike has worked as an editor, writer, and marketer. He first wrote about marketing in 1998 for internet.com (later Jupitermedia). He then worked with marketers at some of the best-known brands in B2B tech, creating content for marketing campaigns at both Jupitermedia and QuinStreet. Prior to joining Third Door Media as the Editorial Director of the MarTech website, he led demand generation at B2B media company TechnologyAdvice.
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