New research: Marketing’s AI era has a data problem

Spend any time scrolling LinkedIn these days and it’s a flood of “check out this new AI tool!” or “I vibe-coded this amazing app!” AI-enabled platforms and tools are expanding in ways we haven’t seen in decades…maybe ever. 

So, you’d think with widespread AI adoption — especially among martech tools — that marketers today are moving, experimenting, and seeing results faster. 

But the thing is — they’re not. 

According to new research, 41% of marketers surveyed say their marketing campaign cycles take at least 30 days to execute. And what’s surprising is that number has increased year-over-year. In 2025’s study, only 37% of respondents reported a marketing cycle of 30+ days. 

Why? It appears data struggles are (still!) the culprit. 

The new 2026 AI and Marketing Performance Index investigates how best-in-class marketing teams are moving fast and driving growth. It also examines how these high performers are (and are not) leveraging AI tools. 

Conducted in partnership with Ascend2, we surveyed 300+ senior marketing professionals across the United States and Canada, all from companies with $100M+ revenue.

The full report is now available to download here, and we can’t wait for you to dig into the stats. But in the meantime, we’ll highlight a few of the key findings below.

Personalization is held back by data issues

If “AI” wins first prize for marketing buzzword of the decade, “personalization” is probably a close second. 

Marketers across industries are laser-focused on improving personalization; our research showed more marketers are prioritizing personalization in 2026 vs. 2025. 

But the survey also showed that issues with measurement, data latency, and fragmented tools are holding back their personalization efforts. Meanwhile, marketers with a fully centralized source of truth for their customer data are more than twice as likely to personalize campaigns. 

And the data centralization issues extend beyond personalization into experimentation, where data quality (42%), technology limitations (37%), and resource constraints (37%) prevent teams from accurately measuring results or linking them to revenue. 

Which leads us to our next finding…

Measurement and experimentation are ineffective

Remember that ancient marketing adage, “always be testing”? As marketers, we love to run A/B splits and multivariate tests to optimize our campaigns. More than half (58%) of the marketers we surveyed spend a moderate or significant amount of time on experimentation.

But here’s the kicker: Only 20% report high-impact from these experiments. In fact, 77% say “winning” A/B tests or experiments fail to scale at least sometimes.

The full report digs into the likely reasons behind lackluster measurement and testing, but here’s the sneak preview: it comes down to the data. Teams that learn more on causal insights vs. correlative, historical data, are more likely to identify whether a campaign or lifecycle marketing change improved a key business metric.

Where you store data matters

Much of our research found that data centralization, reliability, and access play a massive role in the success and impact of marketing teams. 

So it's not surprising that organizations with a fully centralized source of truth for customer data are more likely to report significant increases in revenue compared to those organizations without one (44% vs. 8%). 

But how and where you store data also makes a difference. Organizations using a data cloud or data lake as their SSOT are less likely to struggle with challenges like measuring the impact of campaigns and managing manual work, compared to those relying on marketing suites.

Real-time data accelerates winning tests

Going back to those marketing buzzword rankings, “real-time” is also near the top of the list. 

Real-time is a major priority for marketers this year and is becoming a competitive requirement. In 2025, “using real-time data” ranked as the #6 priority for improving marketing performance. But this year, it jumped to the #2 spot. 

Despite the growing interest in real-time marketing, our research showed that relatively few organizations have fully adopted it. Only 12% of marketers say their personalization efforts are primarily driven by real-time customer context.

But for those 12%, the use of real-time data is highly correlated with more effective measurement and scaling winning tests. 

• Teams using real-time customer context and behavioral signals are more than 2x likely to see high-impact experimentation results (43% vs. 18%). 

• These teams are also significantly less likely to see “winning” tests fail at scale (8% vs. 22%). 

AI is becoming a strategic layer

The early days of AI were all about speed. But the conversation is shifting to more strategic use cases. 

Last year, our report found that the majority of marketers see AI as a tool that can not only speed up execution, but also as a resource for strategic growth. And that hasn’t changed in the 2026 survey. 

With this year’s data, we found a growing shift toward using AI to enhance experimentation and optimization, with 36% of marketers now identifying A/B testing and real-time optimization as the biggest opportunity for AI, up from 27% last year.

High-growth teams prioritize differently

One of the primary headlines that remained consistent from 2025: fast growth comes from fast campaign activation. Organizations seeing the strongest growth are significantly more likely to prioritize speeding up marketing campaign execution (43% vs. 26%).

What else are those high-growth teams doing to succeed? They focus more on balancing brand and performance (35% vs. 19%) and scaling personalized experiences for customers (34% vs. 24%). These high-growth teams are also more likely to lean on AI for:

• Automating audience segmentation

• SEO/content optimization

• Generating insights and recommendations

Teams are ready to run fast with AI, but can their data keep up?

As marketers, it can feel like we’re constantly running to catch up to the next wave of change — a new AI tool, shifting customer expectations, an emerging content channel. Meanwhile, there’s more pressure to prove marketing ROI. 

If you’re feeling out of breath, you’re not alone. 

The best way to prep for the marathon is to focus on your data. As we’ve seen across two years of research, data fragmentation, reliability, and access are often the root cause of our marketing struggles. And it doesn’t matter what that new AI tool promises — if it’s not connected to your SSOT and relying on up-to-date customer information, it’s not going to deliver the results you need. 

Start with your data strategy, and the marketing, AI, testing, and personalization strategy will follow. 

Dive into the full report to find more insight on how high-performing marketing teams operate.