The Measurement Paradox

More data than ever. Less confidence than before. Something's broken in marketing measurement and it's costing real money.

I’ve lost count of the number of marketing conferences where someone confidently declares we’re living in the “golden age of data”. Graphs go up and to the right. Everyone nods. Then you talk to actual marketers afterwards and get a very different story.

New research from EMARKETER and TransUnion—196 US marketers surveyed in July 2025—confirms what many of us suspected. Yes, 62% have some confidence in their metrics. But dig deeper and the picture gets uncomfortable. More than half (54%) report zero change in confidence year-on-year. Another 14% say it’s actually declined.

We should be getting better at this. The tools certainly keep improving. Instead, confidence has flatlined. In some cases, it’s going backwards.

Data everywhere, insight nowhere

The problem isn’t lack of data. It’s that the data doesn’t talk to itself. Nearly half of marketers (49.5%) cite siloed or incomplete data as the main reason they question their measurement. Cross-channel deduplication? A nightmare for 48%. Wall…