Data is playing a bigger role in marketers’ jobs, and only a small percentage are choosing to put all of their data and analytics with external parties.
Marketing consultancy NewBase’s report, The Evolving Marketer, surveyed 120 global CMOs from 20 markets (including Canada) to get a better idea of the evolving role of the CMO, what they are spending more time on, where budgets are changing and what’s getting outsourced. The aim is to build a profile of what the current marketing lead’s job description looks like.
While creative and brand strategy still play a huge role in the CMO’s job, aspects related to ad buying, such as research, insights, programmatic and ad ops are also playing a bigger role in their day-to-day.
Despite how much time it takes, only 13% of the CMOs’ companies outsource all of their data and analytics. Just under half (43%) do the analytics completely in-house, while the remaining 43% use a combination of in-house and outsourced work. For ad operations, a larger portion (28%) are completely outsourced, but even more (45%) are completely in-house, while almost a third (30%) are a combination.
Programmatic is the only area where the majority (43%) is completely outsourced. Just over a quarter (27%) are a combination of in-house and outsourced, while 32% are completely in-house. As for research and insights, 28% is done completely in-house, 28% is completely outsourced and 44% is a combination.
Overall, digital marketing makes up for most of the CMO’s duties (85% say it’s a significant part of their role), while 51% say data and analytics are part of their jobs, 46% say the same about research and insights, 40% about ad operations and 37% about programmatic.
In total, 78% of CMOs said they are investing more time in data and analytics than they used to. In addition to this, 78% say they spend more time on digital marketing, 69% on research and insights and 66% on programmatic. While many also feel like creative, branding and product marketing are taking up more of their time, an additional 30% say ad operations are playing a bigger part.
NewBase wrote in the study that data, analytics, information and tech have “transformed” the marketing role. However, despite the increased focus on data, the average CMO claims that more than half the data available is not being used to its full potential, and three-quarters say they “only exploit a small proportion of the data they have access to.”
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