The Subprime Data Crisis

This trend is about the great big lie at the heart of the digital marketing industry. It feels like every day I hear about some nifty new measurement technique: multi-touch algorithmic attribution, eye-tracking studies, MRI brain scans. You could be forgiven for thinking that we’re living through a glorious revolution in marketing measurement. But we’re not.

Marketers have an obsession. A deep, dark, self-destructive obsession. What is the object of this obsession, you ask? In a word: newness. Marketers are absolutely obsessed with new things. New platforms. New products. And, above all else, new ideas. If I had a nickel for every time a client asked me for a never-been-done-before “big idea,” I could buy a one-bedroom apartment in Manhattan.

Most of the buzz around AI is about creative disruption: faster ads, automated campaigns, generative content. But for B2B marketers, the bigger opportunity and the bigger disruption isn’t creative. It’s diagnosis: understanding the customer. Market research has always been slow, expensive, and painfully limited. AI changes that. Suddenly, B2B brands can tap into the world’s largest panel - the internet itself - and get insights faster, cheaper, and at scale.