Forget dashboards – doing data right is all about making better decisions. Our buyer’s guide distills the best of our Data for Drummies content into one essential read, with the practical steps and frameworks marketers need to know in 2025.
Photo by Luke Jones on Unsplash
This year, it’s estimated that the world will generate 181 zettabytes of data – that’s 181 trillion gigabytes built from every click, stream, swipe, purchase and post your customers make. Each of those micro-moments is a potential clue to what people want, need or might do next.
Yet almost half of consumers say they don’t trust brands to use it responsibly and nearly six in 10 are uneasy with their information being used to train AI. Meanwhile, platforms like Meta are promising end-to-end automated ads by 2026.
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And that’s the paradox: more data, more automation, more opportunity – but also more scrutiny, more complexity and more pressure on marketers to prove ROI. Ask any marketer and most will admit they still struggle to turn raw numbers into real business results. The promise of personalization, performance and predictive AI is well and truly here, but so too are new privacy laws, consumer backlash and cultural debates about how much brands really know about us.
The truth? Data is more than just numbers on a spreadsheet. It’s about empathy, trust and creativity – if you know how to use it. That was the surprising conclusion from a trio of industry leaders at The Drum Awards for Marketing Americas: data, long blamed for the death of creativity, might just be the thing that brings humanity back to marketing. Used wisely, it can make marketing more human, not less.
It’s with this context in mind that this guide is designed as the single most useful read in our Data for Drummies hub, giving marketers a roadmap to surface the insights that matter and make smarter choices about where, when and how to invest in data.
It starts with the million-dollar question: are you collecting the right kind of data – and is it usable? Before investing in any platform, partner or pilot, ask: is it fit for purpose?
Marketers today face two extremes: too much data (dashboard bloat) or too little action (analysis paralysis). As Nives Zver, head of strategy and insights at Marble LDN, warned in our Breaking Bad (Data Habits) roundtable with agency leaders: “If your dashboard doesn’t tell you what to do next, it’s just a screensaver.”
Vanity metrics and bloated dashboards don’t move the needle. Actionable insights do. As explained in our data decoded guide, leaner, cleaner strategies are winning out where a single data point can spark a decision within days, not months.
What to look for:
Decision-ready dashboards: real-time updates, cross-channel visibility, alerts that trigger action.
Data hygiene: deduplication, consistent naming, data lineage tracking.
Lean metrics: incremental lift, customer lifetime value (CLV), cost per incremental acquisition.
Top data tip for Drummies: Audit where your data lives. Ask every vendor, ‘How quickly can I turn this data point into an action?’
With third-party cookies crumbling, first-party data (1PD) is the big growth driver. But knowing that and operationalizing it are two very different things.
As Matt Lamprell, head of data & tech at MG OMD, sets out in his five steps, the trap is starting with tech. “It’s often already in place and you’re left trying to retrofit a role for it,” he says. “This is rarely going to be a formula for success.” The smarter move is to start with the business challenge and then map your tech and data capabilities to it.
What to look for:
Does the partner integrate CRM with paid media for exclusions, lookalikes, value-based bidding?
Can it connect purchase data to creative outcomes?
Will it scale across channels, not sit in a silo?
“When identity is tied to outcome data and that information is accessible across web, mobile, streaming and in-store screens, AI becomes a genuinely useful decision-making engine. That’s when you really start to see success,” says Esme Robinson, director of platform solutions at Epsilon, whose analysis shows how together AI and first-party data can supercharge marketing – with loyalty schemes and retail media ecosystems already setting the pace.
Top buyer tip: Make first-party data the engine of measurement as well as targeting. If it can’t prove business impact, it’s not working hard enough.
Privacy has shifted from blocker to brand advantage. Usercentrics’ research reveals the true picture of what customers really think about brands using their data. 44% say transparency is the No 1 driver of brand trust, but they’re becoming more discerning in their consent choices; 46% click “accept all” less often, while 59% are uncomfortable about their data being used to train AI.
This is not just a compliance issue. It’s a commercial one. As Jellyfish’s chief solutions officer for martech Alex Davies says: “Respecting user privacy is non-negotiable. The path forward is not about exploiting loopholes but about fostering genuine trust.”
He highlights two factors that should be considered within your data strategy: volume and quality. Google, Meta and various other platforms have invested heavily in privacy-enhancing technologies to address both, with Google Tag Gateway shown to increase data volume by up to 11% based on Google’s internal data.
Google’s Adam Taylor and Jellyfish’s Luisa Del Maschio break this down further in this handy explainer video on how to responsibly restore consented conversion data that would otherwise be lost due to browser restrictions, with an impactful, straightforward solution that UK marketers can implement today.
The business upside to this? Trusted brands see higher opt-in rates. Opt-ins fuel richer data. Richer data drives better performance.
As IAB’s Angelina Eng puts it: “Privacy isn’t a speed bump – it’s a launchpad” and why Usercentrics is leading the charge on privacy-led marketing [explained by CMO Adelina Peltea in this short primer video].
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For too long, data has been blamed for stifling creativity – but that myth is fading fast. In conversation with The Drum earlier this year, leaders from Reckitt and Adverity compared the still-evolving state of data democratization to Lego bricks. “Data and creativity go really well together… access to data is giving us a lot of power to have even more creative ideas,” says Bastien Parizot, senior vice-president, IT and digital at Reckitt.
The proof is in award-winning campaigns that show how a single data point can spark cultural movements [see all nine winners in our creative impact round-up]:
Diageo: AI-powered cocktail pairings based on food search data.
Danone BebeClub: AI poop tracker to ease parental anxiety.
Google Ramadan: cultural insights powering a viral anthem.
Buyer takeaway: Don’t stop at data as reporting. Ask agencies how data will inform creative ideation. Can they show the link from dataset to idea?
If you want a playbook, the ANA has just delivered one. It’s time to “stop treating third-party cookies as your crutch,” it says, with its Portfolio of Data Solutions setting out five power plays every buyer should understand and build into their roadmaps:
First-party data: consented, trust-driven.
Clean rooms: privacy-safe collaboration, especially for CPGs and publishers.
Cookieless IDs: encrypted identifiers built from 1PD.
ID-less signals: contextual, aggregated targeting when identifiers aren’t available.
Marketer leadership: data can’t be left to IT alone – CMOs must own it.
As for what comes next for data, Kantar’s Jane Ostler breaks down synthetic data, explaining how it mimics real datasets, boosting sample sizes or modeling hard-to-reach audiences. It’s fast, cost-effective and privacy-friendly – but it must be grounded in high-quality human data. Without that, synthetic data risks bias and poor predictions.
And while agentic AI is hyped as the autonomous assistant, the reality is still more promise than performance. As agency leaders say, AI won’t fix bad data structures; it will amplify them. Buyers should expect accelerators (querying datasets in natural language, automating reporting) but not full campaign autopilots – yet.
With debates around ownership of data, the consensus was clear: brands must take responsibility, with agencies acting as “sherpas.” The takeaway here is to define ownership internally. Ensure agencies translate, not control, your data.
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For marketers moving forward in 2025 and beyond, the message is clear: agencies can’t be expected to just deliver dashboards – they need to be decision engines. As Phil Case, president of Max Connect Digital, told us in our Agency Advice series: “Clients don’t need another rearview mirror; they need headlights.”
The best partners cut through noise, operationalize insights and run “living experiments” that turn complexity into clarity. “This means treating every campaign, audience segment or channel as a mini test bed that continuously feeds intelligence back into the broader strategy,” says Amar Vyas, chief data & technology officer, M+C Saatchi Fluency.
What to demand from a true partner:
Embedded strategists, not just analysts.
Weekly “data sprints” with testable hypotheses.
Clear “do this tomorrow” actions, not just decks.
Integration of creative + data to connect insight with execution.
Audit your foundations: Do you know what first-party data you already have? Where does it live? How clean is it? Who owns it?
Challenge the vanity: Are metrics tied to business outcomes, not just clicks? Ask the ‘why’ question. Don’t collect data for the sake of it – every point should link to a clear business outcome. Can you prove incremental impact?
Pilot before scale: Test clean rooms, contextual signals, cookieless IDs in “beta mode” before scaling.
Take trust as currency: How transparent is the partner’s consent UX? Do they measure trust? Make privacy and transparency part of the brand experience, not just legal compliance. Use AI with explainability: Can they show you why the model made its decision?
Make creativity count: Will data fuel ideas, not just reporting? Choose solutions that unlock ideas as well as insights.
Decision-ready dashboards: Demand action triggers, not wallpaper. If a dashboard doesn’t drive a decision, scrap it.
Choose partners, not providers: Look for agencies and tech platforms that act as guides, not just vendors. Agencies should guide like sherpas, not hold your data.
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