What’s next for marketing analytics platforms?

We predict further refinement of data-driven decision making, as the evolution of marketing analytics continues 

Key points: 

• The increased use of ad blockers and the rise in the number of users refusing cookie consent has made the data collected by traditional analytics platforms increasingly inaccurate. 
• Within the next five years, with the proliferation of large language models and ever-expanding datasets, we envisage a fundamental shift in the way asset managers plan, buy and assess their marketing activity. 
• Data-driven decision making will be redefined. The interface for accessing this information will look wildly different, working with digital assistants to delve deeper into data. 

Nowadays, it’s unthinkable to run marketing activities without the use of analytics platforms. These tools provide marketers with vital data points on how their campaigns are performing, which prospects are engaging with their content the most, and so much more.  

But while data-driven business decisions are second nature for modern-day businesses, not too long ago, marketers were making important decisions based on data that was far less accurate or insightful.  

In 2004, when Fundamental Group was founded, the options for marketing analytics were extremely limited. While B2B advertisers began using analytics in the late 1990s and early 2000s, as digital advertising and online marketing started to gain prominence, it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that the adoption of sophisticated analytics tools really took off.  

The rise of analytics platforms 

One of the early driving factors behind the adoption of analytics was the rise of digital marketing channels such as search engine marketing, display advertising and email marketing. These digital channels provided advertisers with greater opportunities to track and measure the effectiveness of their campaigns compared to traditional offline advertising methods.  

Google Analytics, one of today’s most popular web analytics platforms, was only launched in 2005. While there were other platforms prior to Google Analytics that provided advertisers with tools for tracking website traffic, user behaviour and conversion metrics – such as WebTrends, Urchin (which was acquired by Google and formed the basis for Google Analytics) and Omniture (now part of Adobe Analytics) – Google Analytics’ powerful features, ease of use and accessibility revolutionised the way marketers tracked and measured campaign performance.  

But as the analytics tools became more sophisticated and advertisers started harvesting more and more user data, privacy watchdogs across the globe began to tighten regulations around what and how user data could be collected. 

Regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) have severely limited data collection options for advertisers. Furthermore, the increased use of adblockers and the rise in the number of users refusing cookie consent has made the data collected by traditional analytics platforms like Google Analytics and Adobe Analytics increasingly inaccurate, significantly reducing the quality and efficacy of the insights that they drive. 

Research by Alphix Solutions, Fundamental Group’s marketing technology business, found that conventional cookie-based analytics platforms fail to record over 60% of traffic due to the reliance on cookies and the use of ad blockers.  

A cookie-less future 

The next generation of analytics platforms, such as Alphix Solutions, no longer use cookies. Our marketing analytics and activation suite uses non-personal data signals to provide marketers with deep sector-specific insights on the behaviour and firms that visit their website and what pages they engage with, as well as a nuanced breakdown of bot traffic. 

Furthermore, Alphix Solutions enables asset management marketers to benchmark their site’s content and traffic volume against that of their peers, and to see which investment topics are most popular on asset managers’ websites and across the financial news cycle. This input provides the foundation for our proprietary large language model to create ad copy for paid search, display, email and social campaigns, ensuring that the messaging is in line with the interest seen in market and distinguished from competitor advertising activity. 

Alphix Solutions has launched these latest additions to the platform in 2024, but our team is already planning what is next in the ever-evolving world of analytics.  

A new dawn of automation, optimisation and efficiency 

Within the next five years, with the proliferation of large language models and ever-expanding datasets, we envisage a fundamental shift in the way asset managers plan, buy and assess their marketing activity. Real-time opportunity identification, automated campaign planning and asset generation, combined with instantaneous execution and optimisation, all done with a few well-informed clicks. This will require marketers to totally rethink the processes, skillsets and resource investments they have today, reshaping the speed and scale of execution which in turn will drive a step change in both marketing performance and ROI.  

Data-driven decision making will be redefined. The interface for accessing this information will look wildly different, working with digital assistants to delve deeper into data. Analysts will no longer need to trawl through endless reports and dashboards and navigate disparate data silos, as actionable insights become more readily available. In turn, asset managers will also need to adapt the way they promote their products and content, not only to investors but also to their AI-powered tools and assistants. 

Of course, human oversight will remain critical in guiding strategic direction, adhering to brand guidelines and ensuring compliance control, but with operations largely automated, marketing costs will reduce drastically as speed to market becomes real time.  

Across the Fundamental Group we are committed to making this prediction a reality, and we are excited to take each of our asset management clients along on this journey. For more information on where we are today, please reach out to Darren Plimmer on [email protected]