AI is speeding up campaign cycles, forcing marketers to confront their weaknesses. While they recognize that siloed tech stacks cost them time and money, integration is a slow process.

• 22.5% say their advertising and marketing technologies are fully unified, but 78.2% expect complete convergence within three years, according to a new EMARKETER and Zeta Global report.

“The organizational drive for greater efficiency is pushing AI into the spotlight,” said our analyst Chris Wood. “AI can help connect data sets and automate more processes, adding value and driving growth.”

Here's how marketing leaders are easing this tension between the need for convergence and the slow pace of change.

Dismissing siloed systems

As AI accelerates workflows, the challenges of siloed systems are harder to ignore. 52.9% of marketers say it's the top force driving martech-–ad tech convergence, according to the survey.

Marketers recognize the value, but they are falling behind in integration. Fewer than one-third (29.7%) actively apply AI across both paid and owned channels.

The repercussions can be costly. When data is fragmented, marketers face wasted spend, incomplete attribution, and weakened targeting, said Wood.

“Organizations understand the pressing need to see when customers jump from ad experiences to other marketing channels,” said Wood. “The only way to know this is through data, and that’s why unifying data is driving marketers closer to martech-–ad tech convergence.”

Privacy pressure promotes change

As regulations tighten and the state of third-party cookies is in flux, marketers are diversifying their approaches. Some 55.1% say first-party data is significantly more important than it was two years ago, according to the report.

Mergers and acquisitions are increasing in the martech and adtech space, signaling a need for vendor consolidation and cost efficiency.

SomeNearly 42.8% of marketers see vendor consolidation and cost efficiency as a major incentive for merging stacks. The need for a unified consumer view is also driving this convergence (50.7%), which elevates both internal data and the audience experience, said Wood.

“Customers want a personalized experience, and marketers recognize this,” Wood said. “To do that well, you need systems that actually talk to each other.”

Considering barriers to convergence

Marketers say customer data platforms (CDPs) play the most significant role in integration (52.2%), followed closely by APIs and middleware (50%), according to the survey.

The wrong technology can just as easily halt progress. Technology constraints (52.2%) and data incompatibility (44.9%) are the top challenges marketers face when integrating.

The challenges aren’t always rooted in tech. Organizational silos (38.4%) and limited expertise (36.2%) threaten to slow momentum.

“There’s the initiative to adopt AI, but there’s also the implementation piece,” said our analyst Gadjo Sevilla. “Some companies are falling short on the training aspect while demanding that employees are up on the latest technology.”

Delivering business impact

For organizations that have started integrating their systems, the payoff is clear. They’re seeing better attribution and measurement (47.1%), improved targeting and personalization (45.7%), and faster campaigns (37%), according to the survey.

• Pep Boys connected customer data to vehicle information, resulting in a 309% increase in click-to-conversion rates for certain email campaigns and over 10x incremental ROAS.
• Interpublic Group (IPG) has built a “single operating system that connects data, media, creative, production, and commerce,” said CEO Philippe Krakowsky.

“In today’s connected, always-on environment, customer journeys hopscotch between ads and digital channels up and down the funnel,” said Wood. “That kind of orchestration is only possible with unified data.”

This article was prepared with the assistance of generative AI tools to support content organization, summarization, and drafting. All AI-generated contributions have been reviewed, fact-checked, and verified for accuracy and originality by EMARKETER editors. Any recommendations reflect EMARKETER’s research and human judgment.